


Boo (Hoo)

by dweeblet



Series: Going, Ghosting, Gone [1]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Future, Angst, Apocalypse, Attempt at Humor, BAMF Danny, Bad Parenting, Bad Puns, Body Horror, Breaking and Entering, Bromance, Bullying, Cannibalism, Chance Meetings, Cheating, Child Death, Child Neglect, Closeted Character, Coming Out, Crack Relationships, Dissociation, Drabble Collection, Drama, F/M, Family Bonding, Family Feels, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gay Male Character, Gen, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Hurt No Comfort, Identity Reveal, Illegal Activities, Insecurity, Kidnapping, M/M, Magic, Mental Breakdown, Misunderstandings, Moral Ambiguity, Moral Dilemmas, Moving On, Multi, Off-screen Relationship(s), Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Siblings, Psychological Trauma, Redemption, Resolved Sexual Tension, Science Boyfriends, Secret Identity, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Stealth Crossover, Suicide Attempt, Talking To Dead People, Team as Family, Time Travel, Tragedy, Trans Male Character, Unbeta'd, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unrequited Love, Villains to Heroes, poc headcanons galore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2018-10-11 00:37:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 25
Words: 48,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10451091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dweeblet/pseuds/dweeblet
Summary: Life happens, for better or worse. Oneshot collection, individual warnings and summaries inside.Now: He's afraid of the future.





	1. Table of Contents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life happens, for better or worse. Oneshot/ficlet collection, individual warnings and summaries inside.

Number - Title. Date. **Rating. Warning(s).** Pairing.

  * _Brief Summary_



* * *

 

 1 - Make Like Cujo. 2017-03-26. **G. N/A.**  N/A.

  * _A stressed Danny gets a nasty surprise._



2 - Papercut. 2017-03-26. **G. blood mention.** N/A. 

  * _Danny gets a papercut._



3 - Baby It's Cold Inside. 2017-03-26. **G. N/A.** N/A. 

  * _It's easy to forget that Danny's not alive, but that's OK._



4 - Midnight Snacking. 2017-03-26. **T. cannibalism, vomiting.**  N/A.

  * _Ghosts can't stay outside the ghost zone because they need a steady supply of ectoplasm. That includes Danny._



5 - What Friends Are For. 2017-03-26. **G. N/A.**  N/A.

  * _Sam and Tucker are worried their best friend will be suspended, or worse. Sam comes up with a plan to fix it._



6 - Easy Way. 2017-04-02. **G. N/A**. N/A.

  * _Danny's growing up._



7 - Subhuman. 2017-04-03.  **T. violence, child death.** N/A.

  * _Maddie spends sleepless nights thinking. She's given a lot to think about._



8 - Family Night. 2017-04-04.  **G. N/A.** N/A.

  * _A family bonding night._



9 - Midnight Snacking II. 2017-04-0. **G. N/A.** N/A.

  * _Danny embraces the hungry little ghost in his belly. It feels good._



10 - We Are. 2017-04-06.  **T. violence, cannibalism mention, language.** N/A.

  * _The war has only just begun in Amity Park._



11 - Bang. 2017-04-11.  **G. mild violence.** N/A.

  * _Payback_ _time._



12 - Belly of the Beast. 2017-04-14.  **G. N/A.** N/A.

  * _It's freezing, dude._



 13 - Aching. 2017-04-16.  **T+. sexual themes/nsfw, internalized homophobia.** One-sided Dash Baxter/Danny Fenton

  * _He saw it coming. That didn't make it hurt any less._



14 - Teen Slang. 2017-04-19.  **T. language** **.** N/A.

  * _Jack had great aim, thank you very much. Honestly, sometimes it felt like he was the only one who knew what he was doing._



15 - False Alarm. 2017-04-23.  **G. N/A.** N/A.

  * _Manuel only wanted to climb higher than Tomás._



16 - Momma's Boy Part I: Danny. 2017-04-26.  **T+/M-. graphic violence/gore, cannibalism, vomiting.** N/A.

  * _Vlad's picked the wrong day for kidnapping: Danny suffers the consequences._



17 - Momma's Boy Part II: Maddie. 2017-04-30.  **T+. graphic violence/gore.** N/A.

  * _Maddie learns the truth about her son and takes it poorly in her denial._



18 - Hate. 2017-05-03.  **G. physical abuse, abusive relationship.** Sam Manson/Danny Fenton

  * _He is obsessed with an impossible ideal, and it's killing him. So, so slowly._



19 - Momma's Boy Part III: Tucker.  2017-05-13.  **T+/M-. violence/gore, self-harm, cannibalism, suicidal ideation.** N/A.

  * _A still-starving Danny struggles to cope with his mother's rejection, and turns to Tucker for comfort._



20 - Momma's Boy Part IV: Jazz. 2017-05-27. **T+** **. violence, suicide mention.** N/A 

  * _Vlad is taken back to Fentonworks and left home alone with Jazz: she needs answers._



21 -Dog Days. 2017-06-28. G **. N/A.** Tucker Foley/Danny Fenton.

  * _Tuck and Danny hang out during a heatwave._



22 - Momma's Boy Part V: Jack. 2017-07-18.  **T. mild violence/gore, referenced self harm/suicide.** N/A.

  * _Floundering helplessly against his uncontrolled emotions, Jack confesses his hunch to Vlad and Jazz, who have some confessions of their own._



XX - Momma's Boy migrated to: [http://archiveofourown.org/works/11604942/chapters/26087454] as of 2017-07-25.

23 - A Turn for the Worse. 2017-08-23.  **T. language, brief gore.** Tucker Foley/Danny Fenton [implied]

  * _How dare she?_



24 - Bad Bad Thoughts. 2017-12-10.  **G/T-. brief mention of self-harm/suicide**. N/A.

  * _He's afraid of the future_.



 


	2. Make Like Cujo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A stressed Danny gets a nasty surprise.

The hallways were inconveniently full when it happened. A block of ice settled in Danny’s lungs, stealing his breath away: a ghost was near. He didn’t take his own ghost form right away, turning to Tucker and Sam who trailed anxiously behind him. They’d heard him gasp, saw the vapor dance from his lips, and watched him in anticipation.

 

“It’s in the building,” Danny hissed through chattering teeth. As a human he only had a vague sense of dread creeping down his spine, no solid direction. He whipped his head, sharp eyes wide.

 

Sam put a hand on his shoulder before he could bolt. “Careful!” She muttered. “You can’t let people see you do the thing.”

 

Danny stared blankly back at her, a frustrated whine bubbling in his throat. Didn’t she understand? It was so close! He held it a little longer as Tucker nodded.

 

“She’s right,” he said, a little hesitantly. “It’s a no-go right now.”

 

The heavy whine slipped out and became a low rattle that rumbled in his chest and made his back prickle. A growl. Something feral. The hairs on his neck stood on end, but not from fear. It took a long moment to realize that his _hackles were up_.

 

A few people glanced quickly in his direction, but the sound was mercifully lost in the chatter of the high school crowd. He breathed a cold sigh of relief, turning his attention back to Tucker and Sam.

 

His friends’ horrified stares only emphasised Danny’s own surprise. Ghosts growled a lot. It wasn’t unusual. They were single-minded, too bound by obsession to be more psychologically complex than wild-raised children. That wasn’t to say that they weren’t clever. Just distinctly sub-human.

 

That wild rationalization didn’t ease Danny’s embarrassment. _He_ didn’t growl. That was something animal and uncontrolled. Destructive, vengeful ghosts growled.The Phantom was uniquely helpful and human. He wasn’t even sure a human throat could produce the sound that had just burst from his chest. He was supposed to be different.

 

Tucker finally spluttered something aloud. “I think you could use that on the Box Ghost,” he supplied helpfully. He was clearly trying to ease the tension, make Danny more comfortable, even as he stepped defensively back. His calloused hands wandered to the strap of his bookbag, ready to swing it off his shoulders.

 

There was a Fenton Thermos inside, Danny knew.

 

He coughed meekly and tapped his chest. “Something in my throat,” he lied. He knew it didn’t work, but Sam nodded cautiously along.

 

“Right,” she said, and hesitated. Danny didn’t miss her anxious pale eyes darting to meet Tucker’s dark ones. “You okay?” _Are you yourself?_

  
He sighed in appreciation, painfully aware of his own movements. “Sure,” he mumbled, walking briskly ahead to duck around a corner. “Let’s just get to work.”


	3. Papercut

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny gets a papercut.

Danny huffed against his forearm, head low against his desk. Lancer rambled on and he paid only marginal attention to what was said. He moved to turn the page of his textbook and hissed in pain when the corner nicked his thumb. Great.

 

Lancer cast a wary eye towards Danny. He pressed his thumb against his lips, briefly sucking on the stinging cut before shaking his hand out with a sheepish grin.

 

Ectoplasm had a very distinct taste and texture. It was thick and syrupy and congealed easily into something like hard Jell-o. Even as a liquid it was freezing to humans, like ice. The taste was like sucking on a penny soaked in embalming fluids, coppery and sick-sour like rot. Danny tasted cold ectoplasm as he swallowed. Cold meant fresh.

 

He looked around, pressing a hand to his chest. His ghost core lay frigid and dormant opposite his heart. Shrugging uneasily, Danny picked up his pencil to resume jotting down notes.

 

Translucent green dripped sluggishly down over the lead. His heart leapt up to his throat as he turned his hand over. Milky ectoplasm oozed from the papercut on Danny’s thumb: he hadn’t felt it. He almost choked, tugging a lock of his unruly bangs down into his proper field of vision, disguising the motion as scratching his head. How studious. Shaggy black hair stared back at him. He was human.

 

That didn’t explain the green leaking from his thumb. Danny closed his fist around it with a grimace. It trickled like ice water down his wrist. He wiped it on the waistband of his jeans where his baggy shirt would hide the stain.

  
He wished the green was red.


	4. Baby It's Cold Inside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's easy to forget that Danny's not alive, but that's OK.

He was sprawled next to Tucker on Sam’s lavish red sofa in the movie room. Tuck hogged the blankets, stretched on his belly and watching Dead Teacher 4 with a blissful, childish grin.

 

Danny reached over to swipe some popcorn from his friend, and Tucker jumped nearly off the couch as their arms brushed one another. A static shock? He rolled his eyes at Tuck’s dramatics, popping the snacks into his mouth.

 

Tucker stared at him with wide dark eyes. “Aren’t you freezing, Dan?” He hissed low over the revving of the onscreen chainsaw and flung a silky down comforter over his head. “I would’ve shared the blankets if you’d said so.”

 

Danny blinked owlishly at the suggestion, shaking the blanket from his shoulders. “What’re you on about, Tuck? I’m fine.”

 

“Are you kidding?” Tucker nearly squawked.

 

Sam glared from her end of the couch, leaning over to pause the movie. “You boys better get a room if you’re gonna get all touchy-feely.”

 

Danny could feel his cheeks burn with flush, but shot his best daggers at Sam. “We’re not touchy-feely,” he protested meekly.

 

An arched eyebrow. “Really?” She crossed her slender arms. “What’s all the noise?”

 

He opened his mouth to retort, but Tucker was faster. “He’s _freezing._ ” He swung his sturdy legs over the sofa, skipping over to grab Sam by the arm. “Just feel him and see.”

  
Danny arched his back defensively, feeling exposed in the silence. It did little to deter his friends as they advanced. “Nobody’s feelin’ me!” He whined. To prove his point, he darted forward to grab the red sweatshirt he’d discarded on the floor, sitting awkwardly upright to tug it over his head.

 

He should have known better than to think it would have stopped Tuck. The other boy grabbed Sam by the wrist and pressed the back of her hand against Danny’s forehead.

 

She yelped aloud and withdrew, eyes wide. “Stay there!” Sam snapped, hands held up in front of her. “I’m getting a thermometer!” With that she spun on her heel and bolted up the stairs, slowing only to call to Tucker. “Cover him up, keep him warm!”

 

Tucker leapt onto his friend, piling blankets and pillows over him without a second thought.

 

“Tuck,” Danny complained. He blew sweat from his brow and tried to wriggle free. The other boy wouldn’t let him.

 

Sam returned quickly with an electric thermometer. It looked like it was hospital grade. “Open up,” she ordered, and Danny parted his lips. He felt hot and drowsy under the blankets and wiggled out as best he could.

 

His friend carefully inserted the tip of the thermometer under Danny’s tongue. They waited in awkward silence until the device beeped and Sam removed it. Her powder-pale face went positively ashen.

 

“That can't be right!” She exclaimed. " _Twenty-one_ degrees and change?" Danny huffed and Tuck crossed his arms expectantly. At that Sam rolled her eyes and explained. “That’s like, seventy degrees Fahrenheit”

 

Tucker visibly relaxed. “That’s not so bad. Seventy's warm, when it's not windy.”

 

Sam shot him an incredulous look. Danny just spectated. “Ideal human body temperature should be almost ninety-nine degrees Fahrenheit, Tucker.”

 

“So?”

 

“Hypothermia usually sets in at ninety-five.”

 

And then the tecchie blanched. Both teens turned to Danny, who had by now wriggled out of the blankets and shed his sweatshirt. Sam reached out to touch him, and her thin fingers were like fever on his bare shoulder. Danny jerked away on reflex with a yelp.

 

Tucker tapped something into his PDA and start rattling off symptoms. “Are you feeling disoriented or confused? Drowsy? Sam! What’s his pulse? Are you-”

 

“Quit it!” Danny finally snapped, arms crossed defensively over his chest. “You’re missing the obvious.”

 

There was a long pause, but Tuck got it first. “Oh,” was all he said. Sam took a little longer

 

“What are you talking about?” She fretted. “You need to go to the hospital!”

 

Danny shook his head. “Nuh-uh, I feel great. I’m more alert and less tired, and my Core has finally stopped feeling like constant reverse-heartburn-”

 

“Core?” Sam shook her head, “You mean ghost-” She looked stricken and a little embarrassed. A lot embarassed. “Ecto-beings require an abnormally low body-temperature to function,” she recited blandly. At least she was learning. “Ghost Core.”

  
Her palm met her forehead with a satisfying smack.


	5. Midnight Snacking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ghosts can't stay outside the ghost zone because they need a steady supply of ectoplasm. That includes Danny.  
> CW: vomiting, cannibalism

Jazz was  _ starving _ . She glanced at her clock and felt disappointment bloom in her chest. Eleven o’clock already? She hadn’t meant to get this carried away with her paper. At least her psychology grade would be stellar.

 

Suppressing a yawn, she picked up her phone and padded as quietly as possible down the stairs. She sighed deeply, passing through the living room to the kitchen. The door swung slightly ajar. She could see faint light from the gap against the wall.

 

She pushed the door open despite her unease to find all sorts of containers scattered across the counters and the table. The counter-lights were on. Food was spilt carelessly over the floor, a jar of peanut butter still rolling even with the spoon stuck into it.

 

There were all sorts of foodstuffs thrown carelessly across the room, fruits with huge ravenous bites taken out only to be discarded, bread and cheese left in opened packages. Even raw lettuce and cucumbers had found their way to being gnawed at and left behind.

 

Okay, Jazz rationalized and picked up a bell pepper. Someone wanted a midnight snack and couldn’t make up their mind. Fine. Hungry burglar, maybe.

 

Her stomach dropped when she found raw meat. The armful of edibles she had cleaned up found its way back to the floor.

 

It was mercifully unfinished, but much more had been eaten than the other foods. Briefly, she wondered if those radiated weiners had escaped from their cage in the fridge. Jazz pivoted and opened the door to check. Gone. It must have been them.

 

She was satisfied with that until she took a moment to examine the meat more closely. The possessed franks were small. Maybe as long as big rats and half as wide. The bites taken out of the raw slab of beef before her were huge for a human being, let alone for such tiny beasts as sentient hot dogs.

 

Wouldn’t that be cannibalism? Jazz brushed the thought away as dread coiled in her belly, and advanced from the cooking area to the closed little dining room. 

 

It was all she could do to stifle a scream as her socked foot sunk into something cold and slick like ice, but with a distantly spongy quality that made her stomach turn.

 

Hopping uselessly on one foot, she peeled off her sock to find it soaked in green. It was the kind of radioactive, searing color that was hard to mistake-- ectoplasm.

 

A lump swelled in Jazz’s throat as she followed the trail, smears of the stuff. A deflated sausage casing torn to shreds sat limply on the tile. She toed it out of the way and mumbled into the dark.

 

“Hello?”

 

No answer. Her gaze followed the trail into the dark bathroom. Jazz pulled out her phone and turned on the display to act as a flashlight. The fresh ectoplasm glittered like ice in the watery blue light.

 

Steeling herself, Jazz entered the bathroom.

 

Danny was curled miraculously between the bathtub and the toilet. She hadn’t known it was even possible for a person his age to fit there, but then again her brother had always been skinny. Hesitantly, she raised her phone and cast the light feebly across the room.

 

There was ectoplasm everywhere, smeared in handprints on the floor and the rim of the tub, on the seat of the toilet-- full of pink-green-brown sludge that must have been vomit. It dribbled sluggishly down Danny’s chin.

 

Jazz gasped softly. “Danno?” She breathed into the dark. His hooded blue eyes snapped to attention and gleamed luminous green in the dark.

 

In a panic, she reached out and flipped on the bathroom light. Jazz could see her brother’s over-dilated pupils rapidly contract at the exposure to bright light. He flinched before she could examine him further, throwing one wiry arm over his eyes with a hiss. Jazz sighed under her breath and took this moment to more accurately assess the damage.

 

He had definitely been vomiting, that much was true. Maybe he’d been grazing and ate something bad? Sleep eating? It might explain all the weird things he’d decided to chew on.

 

It wasn’t sleep eating, she realized, at  the sight of the almost-empty little cage that had been used to hold the hot dogs. Nearly every one had had its top bitten off, deliberately, and been squeezed dry. Jazz could see by the half-drained little corpse in her brother’s loose fingers that their insides were gelatinous green.

 

Ectoplasm.

 

If it was cannibalism for tiny franks to eat beef, it was definitely cannibalism for a ghost to suck out another ghost’s life-force, no matter the cravings he might have had. Maddie and Jack had mentioned it once-- ghosts needed ectoplasm to survive. That’s why they couldn’t last long beyond the Ghost Zone, the dimension that produced it.

 

Her brother was surrounded by food and starving to death.

 

The four remaining hot dogs; there had only been a baker’s dozen in all, Jazz thought; were huddled like worms in the furthest corner of their cage. Danny lifted his head and they all squealed in horror. 

 

He looked like shit. Jazz made a mental note to swipe some ecto-power cells from her parents’ blasters when they weren’t looking. Her brother could use them.

 

“Hey,” he said, and his voice was only a hoarse whisper.

 

“Hi,” replied Jazz.

  
Danny doubled over and threw up in the bathtub.


	6. What Friends Are For

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Tucker are worried their best friend will be suspended, or worse. Sam comes up with a plan to fix it.

"If we both stick to the story, they can't prove anything."

 

Tucker Foley frowned. “Sam,” he whispered. “This is a  _ bad _ idea. People in this town are dumb sometimes, but they’re not this stupid.”

 

The girl snorted and tossed her head, sleek black hair rippling in the dark. Tucker could hardly see her in the shadows, especially with her subdued choice of dress. “You kidding?” Sam Manson scoffed and swung her leg over the windowsill. “All of Amity Park’s got their heads up their asses.”

 

“Point,” Tucker conceded, glancing nervously down at his PDA. The ladder he was holding shook and Sam swore violently, clinging to the window frame for dear life.

 

“Pay attention!” She hissed, and dropped to the other side of the window. Her head popped up over the windowsill a moment later. “Now get up here,” she ordered, and held the ladder down from above.

 

Tucker hurriedly clambered up the rickety maintenance ladder and slipped ungracefully over the sill with a grunt. Sam winced at the sounds he made, but said nothing.

 

The boy brushed himself off with a quiet little huff as he adjusted his beret. “But  _ still _ ,” Tucker pressed. “This is wrong.” At his friends disaffected silence, he pressed on. “It’s not just wrong, it’s  _ illegal. _ ”

 

Sam shrugged and padded over the tiled floor as quietly as she could. “Danny does illegal stuff all the time.”

 

“Yeah,” Tuck snapped in a hushed whisper, “but we’re not Danny.” He glanced nervously behind and to the side as he trailed behind the goth. “He can turn into someone else, tuck his tail between his legs and lay low, or even hide behind his loco parents if something goes wrong. If we get caught,” he warned, “ _ We _ get caught.”

 

“We won’t get caught,” said Manson without missing a beat. “Now c’mon.”

 

Foley gave a defeated whimper. “Why’d I even come?” He complained, throwing an arm dramatically over his eyes. When Sam didn’t answer, he tugged on her sweater sleeve. “Seriously though, why am I here?”

 

Rolling her eyes, the girl shook Tucker off. “‘Cause you’re the only guy I know who can navigate the school records without getting traced, or something.”

 

“Okay. Why’re you here?”

 

“‘Cause I’m the only girl I know who can make sure you actually do it.”

 

A sigh. “I don’t feel good about this, Sam.” They rounded a corner to find something like the teachers’ lounge, but more like an office cubicle than anything, with boxy old monitors and an oscillating electric fan in the corner to keep the archaic tech from overheating.

 

Sam pointed to one computer towards the back left corner of the room. Instead of unsightly beige, it was more of a washed-out grey, and looked like a slightly newer monitor. “There. Admin’s machine.”

 

When her friend stared blankly, dark eyes pleading, she shoved him forward. “Do your thing. Sooner you get it over with, sooner we can go home.”

 

Grumbling, Tuck pulled the dusty swivelling chair out from the desk and started clacking away on the huge old keyboard. He mumbled about stuck keys even as he hooked his PDA into the angrily whirring machine.

 

“Someone needs to clean this thing,” he hissed in quiet disgust as the computer rattled to life.

 

“Shush!” Sam snapped, tossing her head towards the doorway. “Just hurry up’n change the grades before we get caught!”

 

Tucker bit his lip. “Thought you said we weren’t gonna  _ get _ caught.”

 

Manson growled something like “Shut up,” and waved him off to finish his work.

 

After several long moments of rattling keys and whining processor, Tuck pulled away from the computer and shut it down. “There,” he said. “You’re lucky this is for the greater good, or you’d never have gotten me to do this.”

 

“You did it because deep down, you love me.” She ushered him along, tiptoeing back to the open window. “C’mon, lover boy.”

 

“Shuddup,” Tucker grumbled over his friend’s snickering, and watched as Sam threw a leg over the sill. She slid lithely down the ladder, landing with a near-inaudible  _ whump _ of flattened grass. He followed suit, edging slowly down before his foot touched each rung.

 

“ _ You’re _ only doing this ‘cause you love Danny. It’s not even that deep down.”

  
It was totally an accident when the ladder jumped and sent Foley tumbling ungracefully into the bushes.


	7. Easy Way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny's growing up.

Sam had never seen Danny eat so much. He’d never had much of an appetite: being so petite like his mom left his caloric needs relatively small. She didn’t really know when it was her best friend had started to eat so much, but his fresh habit became quickly apparent.

 

It was more than likely because of his abrupt growth spurt.

 

For several weeks, it seemed food was the only thing on Danny’s mind. He complained constantly of being hungry and grazed throughout the day on inexplicably produced snacks that seemed to appear out of thin air. 

 

Much to Sam’s chagrin, he had even developed a pronounced taste for meat, something he had never had before. Danny had never really been picky, so it was strange to see him favor one kind of food so much over others.

 

But it made sense; he was growing. His body demanded protein; protein that Sam privately insisted was best obtained by means of vegetables and nuts and things  _ without _ faces; but meat was the easiest way for a boy like Danny to obtain it.

 

It was odd to see the boy eat so much and so often while still remaining so small and thin. He looked like a weeping willow with his sharp face and vaguely droopy posture. That was to be expected, though; Danny was a wimp to everyone else, but Tucker and Sam knew that he was probably the most active kid in town, constantly fighting and running and saving people’s lives.

 

The part that worried Sam and Tucker was when their friend had abruptly stopped eating altogether.

 

* * *

 

After one evening run-in with Skulker, Sam and Tucker watched Danny, still in ghost form, float through his bedroom wall,l cradling his jaw with both hands.

 

“Are you okay?” asked Tuck, adjusting his glasses. “Did he getcha?”

 

The halfa mumbled a muffled positive from through his gloved fingers, wincing audibly.

 

Sam reached into her spider backpack to pull out a first aid kit-- she had started to carry them around for good measure. “C’mere,” she said, ushering Danny over as the kit clicked open. “Take your hands off your face and let me look.”

 

Danny didn’t  _ growl _ per say, not like the first time an uncontrolled snarl had stolen from his throat, but both of his friends could hear the faint rumble in his chest despite his best attempts to hide it. He floated lower, ghostly tail splitting into two legs again as he touched down. 

 

Tucker could see his face was flushed with thinly veiled embarrassment, grey-purple skin tinged with faint blue-green undertones on his cheeks and nose. A thread of stringy green ectoplasm that colored his blush dripped sluggishly from between Danny’s fingers.

 

“Danny,” Sam warned firmly. “Show me your face. You’re being weird.”

 

The ghost boy whimpered, visibly wilting. “M’mouf hurrs,” he slurred through his hands. Despite his refusal to move himself, he didn’t resist when Sam took him by the wrists on her own.

 

“Your mouth?” Tucker echoed. “Did Skulker break your teeth or something?”

 

An unintelligible gurgle was Danny’s only response as Sam pried his mouth open and pressed his tongue down and out of the way. She was firm, but trying her best to be gentle. Phantom still whimpered pitifully as she probed his mouth with a Q-tip from the first aid kit.

 

He yelped suddenly when she poked at the frontmost roof of his mouth, a sharp yipping sound that left his two human friends recoiling with a start.

 

“No!” Danny snapped, and covered his mouth again. “Don’tuch,” he slurred, words bleeding awkwardly together. “‘At  _ hurr-tiss. _ ” Despite his difficulty in articulating, the exasperation in his tone was unmistakable.

 

“I  _ know _ ,” Sam pressed, waving the first aid kid in his face. “But I need you to let me look so I can make it  _ not _ hurt.”

 

The halfa pouted, whimpering piteously. “What are you, dude, a toddler?”

 

“He  _ is _ .”

 

Danny bristled. “M’not!” He insisted, crossing his arms over his chest. He sure looked like one, even with his own blood congealing on his chin. Speaking of which…

 

Sam yanked her friend by the collar of his hazmat suit over to his bed, forcing him to sit down. The slick fabric felt unsettling between her fingers, a heebie-jeebie discomfort like scratching Velcro. Danny didn’t seem to notice.

 

The halfa sighed deeply, puffing up his chest before deflating and offering his open mouth to the aspiring veterinarian he called his friend.

 

Manson frowned, brow furrowed in confusion. “Tuck,” she said, “use that stupid PDA of yours to find something for broken-” A long moment was spent in awkward silence as she squinted and tipped her head up into her best friend’s mouth. “Nevermind.”

 

An indignant squawk came from Danny. While wordless, the message was clear: ‘What? Why? Aren’tcha gonna help?’

 

Tucker gave words to his friend’s yowling cry. “Why? Is it somethin’ spooky?”

 

Sam shrugged. “You have super fast ghost-healing?”

 

Danny nodded, then tipped his head at her like a lost puppy. ‘Why?’ It would have been almost cute, but the boy’s ghost form was just inherently unsettling: clouded green eyes rimmed by bruised purple bags, a shock of white hair that stirred as though by an imaginary breeze, skin blue-grey like a cadavre and speckled with tiny green dots -- freckles -- like drops out a broken glowstick. Being rendered mostly nonverbal by his injury only made the situation more uncomfortable for everyone involved.

 

“I think your teeth are already growing back.”

 

Danny did that infuriating puppy-dog head tilt again, before seeming to probe his own mouth with his tongue. He winced a little, but nodded eagerly.

 

“Feels better already,” he agreed, and returned to human form in a passing flutter of light. “I’m done for the night.” He stretched, and Tucker could hear his vertebra popping as he realigned his spine. Sam cringed. “I’m gonna wash up. You guys make yourselves at home, or go home. Do whatever.”

 

Sam looked to Tucker and grinned. “Sleepover?”

 

* * *

Vlad had pointed ears. With that ridiculous upturned collar and sweeping streaked hair, he looked like a discount Dracula right down to the red-lined cape. It was kind of funny. Danny had seen other ghosts with pointed ears. He hadn’t expected to be one of them.

 

He had first noticed while showering. There were shampoo suds caught on the back of his ear that quietly popped and tickled his skin. As he rinsed the soap from his hair Danny combed his fingers through it, and felt something soft and vaguely cool to the touch; the arch of his ear. 

 

The fleeting touch had felt odd and over-stimulating. It sent uncomfortable shudders down Danny’s spine, a vaguely overwhelmed feeling of  _ don’t touch  _ and  _ wrong wrong wrong _ . 

 

Expecting to be somehow wounded, that he had missed a spot patching up, Danny finished washing himself and stepped out of the tub. He turned to face the bathroom mirror in uncaring nakedness, fingers absently tracing the Lichtenberg scar that wound its way down his left thigh.

 

It was at once his favorite and most hated scar. The old wound looked like someone had inserted vines under Danny’s skin; faintly greenish lines that stretched from the nape of his neck, down across his shoulder blades, splintering to cross his stomach just above the belly button before converging at the hip and travelling to his knee.

 

The rest were battle scars: stab wounds, old stitches never removed, burns, scratches, even hindbrain-driven lumps of scarring where actual chunks of flesh had been removed from his body. 

 

Danny wondered if his ear had gotten torn in some recent fight, and he hadn’t ever noticed. So he leaned against the bathroom sink, tipping his head and brushing his wet hair away to find… disconcertingly long ears.

 

For a long moment Danny didn’t feel anything, just this idle understanding of  _ ears, pointed, ok, that’s fine. _ It took only an instant more for the distant curiosity to give way to panic as the implications swelled in Danny’s mind.

 

It had always been so easy to pretend that he was normal once his powers were under control. This made him feel so alien, inhuman. He wondered if Vlad had undergone these changes in the same way, with the same horror.

 

He spent what felt like hours staring blankly at his reflection before the bargaining was done in his head and Danny was ready to start accepting. 

 

The ears were only slightly tapered, he realized. Not  _ really _ pointed, just a little oddly shaped at the tip. Much to Danny’s displeasure, his ears did take issue to being touched-- loudly. It was a sensation not unlike being tickled, but intensely unpleasant, with an undertone sensation of nails-on-chalkboard intolerability. He hissed through his teeth and noted that touching was a no-no.

 

Danny squinted and tried to listen. If he tried hard enough, he could hear his own sluggish heartbeat; his parents clanging and clattering about in the lab below. He turned his attention upwards to Jazz’s room. Maybe he could hear her exercise-

 

Oh.

 

His ears had pivoted slightly upwards of their own accord, but with his startled displeasure they quickly drooped and splayed flat against his skull. Great. 

 

Mercifully, they were hardly very mobile, and their motions would more than likely go unnoticed unless one was looking for them. Knowing Tucker and Sam, they would have him read like an open book when they caught wind of this.

 

With a sigh, Danny glanced at the bathroom door to make sure it was locked. He jiggled the doorknob for good measure before taking ghost form. Predictably, his ears were significantly longer now, and much more expressive. He watched in mild awe as they twitched reflexively, turned slightly forward along with his attention.

 

Between the ears, teeth, and faintly blue-tinged skin (courtesy of his ice core,) Danny found himself looking a lot like his buddy Vlad.

 

Danny. Vlad. Danny and Vlad. Danny and Vlad and  _ Him _ .

 

Any whimsy pertaining to the halfa’s new physique was crushed beneath cold coils of dread in his gut.

 

* * *

 

Danny had been unusually subdued that week, simmering with quiet, angry despair.    
  


Tucker was worried.

 

His friend was the type to blurt out a constant stream of cynical, acerbic wit that bluntly and shamelessly deflected any attempts at contact. That was Danny’s defense mechanism. He had been having a hard time lately, but it was concerning for him to have suddenly gone quiet.

 

Sam had noticed too.

 

When the time came for Danny to go ghost, he hesitated. There was fear in his eyes, but that wasn’t right-- he had only been challenged by Johnny Thirteen, and that was only because he’d gotten into another spat with Kitty and wanted to blow off some steam. Again.

 

“Go on!” Tucker cried from beneath the pile of alleyway garbage he’d been thrown into. Johnny’s Shadow lunged at a currently-human Danny. “Quick!”

 

“I don’t want to!” Danny snapped in reply, deftly avoiding another swipe. He was impressively quick, even in his human form, but he couldn’t do much more than evade.

 

Sam growled, slamming her fist on the side of the dumpster she was crouched beside. “Why?” She bit, and threw a moldy can at Johnny as best she could. “It’s just us!”

 

“I know!” The halfa cried helplessly, lips pulled back in a grimace as one of Johnny’s shots grazed his arm. He mumbled something his friends couldn’t hear, fists clenched, and suddenly that ghostly aura spread up from his waist in a silver flash.

 

Danny swung his head around, floating tensely above the dumpster. His eerie green eyes radiated shame as he stared expectantly at his friends. Even Johnny had let up in his attack, eyebrows pushed up to his hairline as he hesitated in place.

 

The halfa’s skin was faintly but distinctly blue-tinged, and unearthly radiant. His ears were pointed and drooped down a little as he met Sam’s eyes. She couldn’t withhold a smile; Danny had always had stupid-big ears.

 

“Kick his butt!” Tucker crowed, and with a sharp-edged smile Danny went into Superhero Mode: quick, fluid movements had him weaving easily around Shadow’s frantic blows. He threw a practiced punch to the apparition's face, taking advantage of the ghost’s stunned hesitation to call out to Tucker.

 

“Light!” He commanded, and Tucker reached into his pack, lobbing a high-powered military flashlight to Danny, who caught it without even looking. He kicked Shadow’s tail out from under it, cuffing it in the face with his elbow before turning on the flashlight, right in its face. Shadow howled in pain as it dissipated and faded to nothing.

 

Johnny’s greasy face just turned whiter. “Shit,” he said eloquently, and before he could flee, Sam had whipped out a Fenton Thermos. The ghost wailed pitifully as he was sucked into the device.

 

Danny floated lower to the ground before cautiously touching down.

 

“Dude,” said Tucker, eyes wide with awe.

 

Sam smacked Danny on the back with a laugh. “You’re a  _ badass _ !” She declared, then reached up to ruffle his white shock of hair.

 

The halfa stared expectantly at his friends. “Not a…” His dark brows were furrowed and pinched his forehead together. He looked like a little kid, gloved fingers self-consciously hovering over the pointed tips of his ears. “I’m not… It doesn’t scare you?”

 

Tucker rolled his eyes. “Nah,” he replied. “I would’ve liked to hear about it  _ sooner _ , Mister Hero-Complex, but this is a cool surprise.”

 

Danny visibly relaxed. “Okay.” He didn’t sound convinced, and was silent all the way home. They all moved together into Danny’s room, and the halfa flopped limply onto his bed. He groaned. “Shadow got m’in the mouth,” he grumbled.

 

“Didn’t Skulker get you there a couple weeks ago?”

 

He mumbled an affirmative. “Every time they get broken they grow back sharper.” His ice-blue eyes drifted over the ceiling as he rolled onto his back. “At this rate I’m gonna be a vampire in everything but name.”

 

Sam snorted. “I don’t think the whole bloodsucker thing really works for you.”

 

Danny smiled lightly. “Me neither.” He went quiet, rubbing at his mouth.

 

“Dan?” Tuck ventured softly, and Danny jumped almost a foot in the air, eyes wild and distant. “Woops- uh, oh. Right.”

 

Sam snorted to mask her discomfort. “Don’t be stupid, Fenton.” She gave his shoulder a firm squeeze. “You finally hit people-puberty. It makes sense to hit ghost-puberty, too.”

 

_ He _ had made it to people-puberty, too.

 

Danny glanced back and forth with pleading eyes, tonguing his mouth and feeling glad that he was human right now. The pain was a little better this way, but not by much. He sighed and swung his legs over the bed, retreating downstairs. 

 

He reappeared only moments later with a bag of those frozen mangoes that Jazz liked and he pretended to hate just to rile her up. Danny popped the plastic bag open and tossed a chunk of fruit into his mouth, rolling it around with his tongue and pressing it up against where it hurt the most.

 

“Cold’s good,” he mumbled to his friends’ questioning looks.

 

Sam nodded. “Good. It should help a little with the irritation.” She reached out to pat him firmly on the back as he sat down on the side of his bed. “You’re looking more alert. That’s good.”

 

Danny nodded, swallowing another piece of fruit. He picked pensively at the threadbare knees of his frayed jeans, tucking his long legs up against his chest. Silence reigned for longer than was polite before the halfa finally spoke.

 

“I don’t wanna go bad.”

 

His friends exchanged twin glances. Sam’s brows were pulled up and pinched in the middle of her forehead, mouth slightly parted as her sorrowful blue-violet eyes flitted over Danny’s face. Tucker’s face was schooled into careful neutrality, lips twitching as he withheld his frowning, hands wringing in his lap.

 

“You won’t,” Tuck finally said. His brilliant dark eyes were steely and determined in contrast to his usually laid-back and pleasant demeanor. 

 

Danny’s gaze slid over his two friends. He looked so helpless and small. “How do you know?”

 

Sam spoke next. “Danny, look at you. You’re a kid who could do anything you want with your ghost powers- money, fame, grades -you name it and you could get it like  _ that _ .” She snapped her fingers for emphasis, reaching out to squeeze her best friend’s shoulder. “But you don’t. You use this to help other people at your own expense.”

 

His ice-blue eyes were uncomprehending. “I know, but-” he gestured helplessly and Tucker could see the faint manacle scarring around his left wrist, courtesy of Walker. “Sometimes I  _ want _ to. Sometimes I wanna hurt people.”

 

She would admit, this was news to Sam. “Oh?” At a quick glare from Tucker, she pulled herself together. “Why don’t you? You clearly  _ can. _ ”

 

Warmth bloomed in Tucker’s chest, and he scoffed internally as understanding gleamed in his best friend’s faceted blue eyes.  _ Lovebirds, _ he scoffed internally.

 

“‘Cause I love you-” Danny blurted out, then brought his hands up to cover his mouth. “I mean- my family, my friends! You guys a-and the town and even the g-good ghosts like Fr-”

 

“Shut up, Fenton.” Sam took him by both shoulders now. “Look at how stupid you are. Don’t you see?”

 

Danny shook his head, and for a moment the girl looked a little helpless. Tucker leapt on the chance.

 

“Come on, Danny.” He settled himself beside the halfa and suppressed the slight chill from the cold aura around his friend. “That’s the difference between you and the other guy. You  _ care _ about people. You  _ care _ about being a good person yourself. You have feelings and hopes and all the things  _ he _ threw away.”

 

“Really?”

 

Danny’s friends snorted in tandem.

 

“Duh,” Sam laughed. “You beat lots of people up, but you help lots of people too. And they all deserve what you give ‘em.”

 

The halfa smiled thinly, baring his teeth. “You’re right, as usual.” His grin turned bitter though, as he nibbled forlornly on another piece of fruit. “I just get afraid.” He wavered, hesitated for a moment, then reached out to tangle his friends’ gentle hands with his own cold ones. “You’re right. I- I just get so… tired, sometimes. I wonder if it would be easier to be… y’know.”

  
Tucker frowned, but his voice was kind. “Maybe it would be. Easier, I mean.” He smiled a little then, relaxing. “But c’mon, Danny. Since when do  _ you  _ ever take the easy road?”


	8. Subhuman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maddie spends sleepless nights thinking. She's given a lot to think about.  
> CW: violence, child death

Phantom scares Maddie in more ways than one. She considers herself to be a more than capable ghost huntress, and a genius to boot. Ghosts don’t scare her, but this one does.

 

She has her share of theories about the unusual beast: Phantom is an enigma on his own. He demonstrates the ability to plan for and worry about the future, coherent speech, sense of self and ability to identify himself even when stylized or depicted in uncolored photos. Not to mention display of complex emotions and flexible motives that are far beyond the single-mindedness of most ghosts. Traits that are so distinctly  _ human _ , sometimes it’s hard to forget he isn’t made of flesh and blood.

 

Other times, it is too easy to leave that sharp-tongued, albeit well-meaning, persona of adolescent sarcasm behind. 

 

Sometimes Maddie can see her son’s face in the specter’s. Their noses are similarly shaped. Phantom’s jaw looks a little harder than Danny’s, but they’re uncannily similar. It’s sometimes as if someone had taken a mask of her son’s face and twisted it, lighting it from within with an unearthly blue-green glow, stretching his ears and filing his teeth to wicked points. 

 

Maddie hunts the ghost-boy all the time, firing off rounds from her ecto-energetic Fenton handgun that whizz off into the sky as the little ghoul twists and loops merrily around them. It’s like a game to him. He laughs shrilly, rubs at the nape of his neck, and shoots snarky remarks over his shoulder.

 

He’s only ever shot at her once.

 

With behavior like that, it might even be plausible to say that the Phantom isn’t a threat. Maddie knows better. He preys on her maternal instinct, building his malleable form around Maddie’s own son to take advantage of her. It’s sickening.

 

He pulls on a mask of comic-book heroism when he’s watched, but Maddie sees the steel in his toxic green eyes. They glow inhumanly, glittering cruel and predatory. He taunts the other ghosts and everyone thinks it’s something endearing and humanizing.

 

Maddie knows he’s just playing with his food.

 

Phantom is incapable of anything other than destruction. He is a beautiful, brutal fighter, but nothing more. His fists fly so eagerly, he summons boiling malevolent power in his palms. He kills and destroys. Maddie knows he’s evil. She knows it.

 

She starts to lose sleep at night. That monstrous ghost terrifies her. The people of Amity Park are fickle; more often than not he has them wrapped around his finger, and there’s nothing she can do about it. 

 

Restless nights are often spent thinking of Danny. With the image of her son, his mild demeanor dancing in her brain, Maddie thinks of the Phantom. She tries her hardest to cross-reference the images in her mind, but the pieces won’t fit together. Some mental block holds her back. They carry themselves too differently.

 

There are screams and flashes of otherworldly light that spin along windows in great silver-green arcs. Maddie can hear Phantom’s feral snarls even over the whine of her bazooka powering up. He slams his opponent, a vaguely womanish figure draped in shadow, clean through a billboard.

 

Phantom is baring his teeth, shoulders hunched, fingers twitching, and Maddie doesn’t think she has ever seen him so furious.

 

“End of the line,” he growls. Electricity leaps between his fingers as he prepares to strike his wounded opponent, but she just laughs.

 

Someone cries pitifully and Phantom whips his head to see it, pivoting in midair. A monstrous animal, with gleaming red eyes and coarse green fur, has a little girl no older than six dangling between his teeth. Maddie has never seen an animal grin, but this one does, maliciously.

 

Phantom’s rage ebbs for a moment, and all he releases is a tiny strangled sound. A stifled sob. The ghost suddenly roars, and Maddie swears she can see his acidic green eyes flash venomous red, just for an instant. 

 

She aims her weapon. The woman of shadows is baring her fangs in a twisted smile as she props herself up on one elbow. Ectoplasm leaks from a puncture through her belly. Maddie hesitates. Phantom is to the right, fingers scrabbling at the beast as it pins him with its massive paws, the little girl splayed awkwardly just aside. She is breathing, but still bleeding. The shadow woman collects herself to the left.

 

The bazooka is too much; the little girl will die. Maddie aims for the woman and shoots, and wishes desperately to have made the right choice.

 

The female ghost’s cries distract the monster, who lifts his head suddenly, red eyes wide. “Butler’s not much with no one to  _ serve _ ,” Phantom spits, and kicks the beast aside. “Isn’t that right, Bertrand?”

 

His voice trembles with thinly veiled rage as the ghost produces a Fenton Thermos from the bag strapped on his back. It looks much too small to have fit the device inside, but it’s not worth questioning. He sucks the ghost inside with the thermos’ blinding blue tractor beam before whipping around.

 

Phantom skids to his knees beside the girl. Maddie’s heart drops. She rushes over, gun raised over her shoulder, and realizes that it still needs to charge before another shot. There isn’t time. With no audience to please, Phantom is going to kill that little girl, or worse.

 

As she nears, Maddie can hear his hollow, tinny voice. It is low, but still thin and boyish. It breaks as he mutters softly - comforting the girl.  _ He’s… helping her? _

 

“Easy now,” she hears him say over the girl’s piteous cries. “I’ll patch you up. It’ll be okay.” And his gloved hands thrum with frigid blue power; he passes them over her wounds. 

 

The girl stops bleeding. Some skin even closes over the worst of the gashes.

 

A low chuckle draws Phantom’s attention, and Maddie follows his gaze. Dammit! The shadow-woman.

 

The young ghost peels his lips back to bare his teeth, all needle-sharp and twisted. “Back off, Spectra. You’ve had your…” He glances furtively at the girl, whose now-closed eyes flutter under their lids. “ _ Fun _ .”

 

“Silly little  _ monster _ . How pathetic you are,” the shadow-woman- Spectra -  sneers. “Choosing humans over your own kind?” She laughs without humor. “Who am I kidding. You don’t  _ have _ a kind, you creepy little  _ freak _ .”

 

Phantom growls dangerously. He doesn’t have any hackles to raise, metaphysically speaking; his body is almost uncannily human in form. Spitefully, his ghostly nature, (the subhuman, evil part, Maddie reminds herself,) compensates easily; splintering green electricity leaps down his spine, a mostly-harmless display of static-shock power. It is a warning.

  
Maddie edges closer. She needs to save the girl while the ghosts are distracted. This is undoubtedly something territorial, if the Phantom’s behavior is anything to go by. He considers Amity Park to be his haunt. It belongs to him. The people here are nothing but possessions, toys. He doesn’t want other ghosts to break them before he can.

 

“I said  _ back off _ ,” he snarls. The little girl flinches in her sleep and he falters, just once, before placing himself between the advancing shadow-woman and the prone form of the human child. “You’re  _ done. _ ” His eerie green eyes dart to the Fenton Thermos, just out of his reach. Maddie watches his face fall like a stone.

 

Her bazooka chimes its readiness to fire, so she does. The blast hits spectra right in the gut, and her red eyes bug out as she’s thrown backward. Phantom flinches, shoulders shaking as he moves to stand over the unmoving girl. 

 

There is something instinctual, protective about that motion. He has just gone to defend a human child without a second thought; there hadn’t even really been a first thought. 

 

Ghosts are ruled by an overwhelming sense of self-preservation, to the point that empathy and emotion simply don’t exist among them. They are almost worse than animals in that they act so human on the surface. It is easy to tell with animals.

 

Yet, Phantom has, on reflex, endangered himself to protect a  _ human _ . 

 

Still shocked beyond belief, Maddie whips out her own thermos and captures the woman of shadow inside. She pivots mechanically to turn it on Phantom, but his back is to her now. His body shakes and soft noises shoot out from his throat.

 

Those gloved hands, so small and childish, yet so huge hovering over the body of a toddler, shake uncontrollably. Tenderly, he scoops the limp girl up to his chest and cradles her there. He presses his pointed ear against her tiny trunk, then hunches over himself and whimpers, still clutching the body as though it might just disappear if he lets go.

 

Maddie lowers the thermos. She doesn’t have the heart.

 

Hesitantly, she lays a hand on the ghost-boy’s shoulder. He tenses immediately, whipping around to face her. There is no half-formed snarl on his face, no ectoplasmic power spilling from his hands. 

 

Just blood-crusted brows furrowed high on his forehead, glassy green eyes staring down at the lifeless body in his arms. He rocks back and forth in place as though soothing the dead girl to sleep.

 

Worst of all, there are tears streaming down his face, and Maddie doesn’t understand.

 

Ghosts are evil and cannot feel emotion. The Phantom sobs inconsolably into the tiny pink jumper of a girl he has never known.

 

Danny has been reserved lately, more so than usual. He is exhausted, always, but this is somehow worse. An air of cloying despair floats around him. He has no desire to do anything but sleep; he is clearly depressed. Purple bruises paint his half-lidded eyes. Maddie can see a fresh cut on his chin at breakfast. Danny doesn’t eat. He tenses when she puts a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

 

Maddie doesn’t try again.

 

He’s a teenager. He needs space. That’s all.


	9. Family Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A family bonding night.

Danny flies without reservation through the night sky. He flicks his tail out behind him to pivot and spin, looping in easy ellipses over the buildings. The soft wash of gossamer moonlight paints Amity Park in mild shades of dawn-blue, broken only by soft orange streetlights.

 

The people of the town call him the Phantom. He had lamely tacked his first name onto the epithet, feeling heroic, but in hindsight Danny is glad for the thin veil of anonymity. 

 

He has always wanted to be an astronaut. He knows he will never be, but that’s okay. He flies and traces constellations he’s had memorized since childhood with his fingertips. The clouds part around him as he draws circles in the night.

 

Some night-owls gawk and point. Some of them take pictures. Danny basks in the attention, flipping and spinning between street-trees, drawing a trail of winking ice crystals into elaborate, abstract shapes behind him.

 

Bravely, stupidly, Danny pulls the green-tinted goggles from the band around his neck and places them over his eyes. He adjusts the strap over his chest bearing two condensed thermoses to make sure it is secure, and cracks his knuckles eagerly. He coils his tail beneath him and pushes off on empty air: Danny shoots straight up.

 

He twists in the air so his belly is up, riding a momentary thermal in a smooth parabola before turning over and diving headfirst towards the ground. The wind whistles in his ears, runs invisible fingers through his shaggy hair and bites at his skin with a fond sort of vengeance.

 

Whooping, Danny pulls up at the last possible moment, whirling over the pavement. The wind kicked up by his undulating tail and outstretched arms sends crumpled brown leaves skittering beneath cars like rodents.

 

Danny sighs, floating lazily up on a draft from the south. It is pleasantly cool and dry, a mild autumn breeze combing the trees.

 

He stops to hover over his own house, faltering. It is dangerous to go there when he is like this, but riding the thrill of a particularly steep dive, Danny alights on the ridiculous Ops Center roof.

 

Forgoing his tail in favor of two legs, he perches easily on the railing of the center’s main platform, squatting with his elbows pressed against his thighs.

 

His hypersensitive ears pick up the distant blaring of a ghost alarm from within the house. Danny can’t resist the chuckle that bubbles up from his throat; he can hear his father’s heavy steps as he sprints up the stairs, his mother’s quicker footfalls not far behind.

 

He feels powerful tonight. He doesn’t move from his place perched on the guardrail, even as the top door bursts open and the two humans’ anxious heartbeats are within his range of hearing. The whine of a weapon powering up is what forces him back to reality.

 

Danny pivots on one foot, leaping weightlessly to face his parents. They don’t recognize him. His face is covered by colored goggles that pick up the light from his lambent eyes and amplify it into unblinking twin pools of green. His skin is covered by the black and white hazmat suit, modified with some light padding on his forearms and shoulders. 

 

Stolen Fenton gear is draped all over his body: thermoses strapped to his back, an ecto-handgun barrel-down at his belt, the glittering green earpiece and mic cupping the left side of his face. He keeps a flask of Ecto-Dejecto at his waist for emergencies, even a specialized Fenton Ghost Attack-Recovery first aid kit in case any humans need help-

 

In retrospect, sitting there with all his pilfered equipment on display isn’t the best idea, but Danny rolls with it.

 

“Hi,” he says and tips his head respectfully. It is a struggle to keep the fondness out of his voice.

 

“”What do you want with us, ghost?” Jack Fenton’s booming voice strikes a chord and Danny can’t withhold his grin. He’s not guilty enough of his bared fangs to keep the idiot smile off his face.

 

He shrugs in response. “Nothing” he says truthfully. “I’m just enjoying the view, y’know?”

 

Maddie’s eyes narrow suspiciously beneath her red-tinted goggles. “Why? Ghosts don’t  _ enjoy  _ views. They don’t enjoy anything, unless they’re obsessed with  _ views _ .”

 

Danny cocks his head at her. He can taste his parents’ shared wary discomfort. “Shows what you know,” he shoots, arms crossed defensively over his chest. At his mother’s tense trigger finger and Jack’s uncomprehending scowl, Danny drops his arms.

 

He shifts deliberately into an easy stance despite the habitual urge to remain in fighting form. Danny can’t help but feel a little naked as he distributes his weight unevenly on the soles of his feet, wringing his hands near his chest and leaving his soft belly exposed, but it does the trick.

 

Jack and Maddie both visibly relax.

 

“So you really are enjoying the view?” Jack asks. Danny nods amicably.

 

“That’s right.”

 

“That’s unusual,” the larger man says.

 

Danny cracks a half-smile. “Not really,” he counters, and moves to remove his goggles. The two humans on the roof tense in unison, weapons quivering. “Easy,” Danny croons, holding up his free hand in a universal gesture of placation. He pulls the goggles down over his chin and lets them hang around his neck.

 

He can taste his parents’ surprise in the air.

 

“Your eyes are more complex than I’d anticipated,” Maddie observes. She sounds a little bit excited at the discovery.

 

“Oh?”

 

She nods. “They have pupils and colored irises distinct from the sclerae,” she says eagerly. “They allow for fine-turned filtration of light and color- Do you see in color?”

 

Danny shrugs a little. “In the day.”

 

Maddie looks positively ecstatic. She has forgotten all about the gun, hands twitching as though she’s looking for something to hold. Jack is beaming, casting quick little glances at his wife as though to make sure she was seeing the same thing he was.

 

He smiles fondly at her, crossing his legs and letting himself drop weightlessly to the ground. “If you need to go get something to take notes with, you can. I’ll wait.”

 

Jack grins broadly. “Absolutely! Can you eat human food?” At Danny’s polite nod, he’s all but glowing. “Don’t move, ghost-boy-- I’ll be back.”

 

“So will I,” Maddie chirps, and together they barrel down the stairs.

 

It’s a wonder they ever catch ghosts at all, Danny muses, and occupies himself with the constellations above. His parents return in what feels like only a moment. Jack has a bowl of fudge in one hand and a bag of potato chips in the other, a half-full bottle of pop tucked underarm and a set of four red plastic cups dangling from the mouth of the bottle. Maddie has a camera and a folder full of loose-leaf paper, a multitude of pens and highlighters, and a thick book full of visual and mental exercises designed to test the sentience of a ghost.

 

Danny grins and helps himself to some fudge as his zealous parents kneel down beside him on the sheet-metal roof. He feels powerful tonight, and beings to answer their questions without reservation.

 

He wishes he could scoop up that moment and put it in his pocket so he would never forget.

 

He will tell his parents the truth, eventually.

 

Maybe even tonight.


	10. Midnight Snacking II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny embraces the hungry little ghost in his belly. It feels good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeowch. I don't really like this one all that much, but hey. Might as well post it. Semi-sequel to Chapter 4: Midnight Snacking.

Sometimes Danny felt like modern-day Moses. The throngs of kids would part like the Red Sea as he stalked down the hallways, eyes cast down and feet pulling him mechanically to his next class. He hadn’t noticed it at first, but people stepped out of his way as he passed. They hovered in the periphery, forming a shifting bubble of empty space around him, a wide berth that no one dared cross.

 

Tucker had noticed it first, and he described it as a reflexive, instinctual reaction. The students of Casper High knew that Danny was bigger and badder than they were, even if it wasn’t a conscious realization. Prey animals fled from predators.

 

Danny was the predator.

 

That thought was sour on his brain, but he realized halfway through freshman year that it was true. He was okay with that.

 

Volatile teenage emotions rolled through the crowded hallways like thunderclouds, bumping and swelling and bleeding together. The faint buzz of that background emotional noise had become a constant in Danny’s life.

 

He allowed himself to slip closer to his ghost side towards the end of the day. It worked all day in the background, churning raw human feelings into usable spectral energy, but it only drew from the trickle of feeling from those nearest to him. The wide berth people kept made sure he couldn’t eat. So he let it unfurl a little; he let his gentle brand of hunger uncoil and ripple out over the students.

 

The ghost in him eagerly gobbled up their anxieties, their fear and their stress. He felt a little guilty for benefiting from the discomfort of others, but soaking up emotional spectral energy was better than cannibalizing other ghosts or consuming ectoplasm raw.

 

Maybe they felt a little less emotional, but the people’s lives would just amble on, none the wiser. Danny had tried to resist the urge to feed once, and lasted a solid two weeks before he cracked. In his starving frenzy, he had eaten himself sick on contaminated hot dogs, and bitten Jazz so hard she’d needed stitches. He still felt guilty for gorging himself on her horror.

 

Sleepy students were better than starvation.

 

He had learned to temper his feeding over time. His first attempts had been raw. Unrefined. Students had been struck by mass paranoia the first time he had tried. The second attempt was only marginally less disastrous. 

 

But Danny was patient. He fancied himself a good hunter. His feeding became less of an ice-water tidal wave and more of a creeping cold, according to Tucker and Sam. It was something normal and innocuous: a prickling on the back of the neck, a little chill, a little gooseflesh on the arms. Nothing crippling. Easily explained away.

 

Humans did not like even gentle spectral touches, especially not from entities as powerful as Danny was. The slight chill faded into soothing calm. He was getting good at this. A master of deceit, luring his prey into a drugged state of relaxation as he siphoned their life force away.

  
It sounded much worse than it really was, when he thought of it that way, so he didn’t.


	11. We Are

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The war has only just begun in Amity Park.  
> CW: violence/gore, language, cannibalism (mentioned)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Self-indulgent as all heck.

Valerie shifted her weight just in time to pitch the jet-sled forward, leaning into a swerving nosedive. She swung sharply around the ruined building, wincing as ectoblasts met their mark where she had been only seconds before. The acrid stench of melting glass and burning plaster stung her eyes, but Valerie didn’t linger.

 

She wasted no time in hanging a sharp left, slingshotting back around the crumbling skyscraper to meet her attacker. He laughed, a hollow, humorless sound, and threw another blast. Valerie twisted and swayed on her jet-sled, firing off rounds from her own ectogun.

 

Watery pink blasts dissipated before they could even reach their target, fizzling into coppery red smoke as they made contact with a sickly green barrier. The evil ghost dispelled his shield, flying after Valerie with a howling sort of whoop.

 

This was all a game to him, and it made her sick.

 

Valerie drew the heavy weaponry from its place strapped on her back, expertly dodging incoming projectiles as the bazooka powered up with high-pitched whine. Her helmet display helped her to lock onto the ghost, all blue-skinned and red-eyed glee, black and white costume caked with plaster dust and sticky red blood. None of it was his. None of it was hers.

 

He grinned, fangs on display, and funneled another blast with both gloved hands. Valerie fired too late. The two rolling balls of plasma collided with a deafening bang, throwing a shower of red and green sparks towards both sides.

 

Coughing from the smoke, Valerie wavered. The evil ghost chuckled darkly. “Good game, Val.”

 

She had no time to evade. She needed to stall. “You don’t call me that, Dan.” It was an old line. Valerie knew she couldn’t stop him. He could call her anything he wanted, but maybe this would be enough…

 

“You wound me,” he drawled, tossing his head and clutching his chest in mock-hurt. He recovered only a moment after, smoothing back his flame-white hair without a care in the world. “Too bad you can’t take what you dish out.”

 

He fired an ectoblast.

 

Desperate, she pushed her jet-sled into full gear, shooting up with all her might. The blast struck her left engine, and Valerie spun out of control. She panicked, windmilling her arms and rifling desperately through her arsenal for hope that she could salvage the situation.

 

Valerie Grey was going to die.

 

Stabilizing her sled was out of the question. It was all she could do to hold on as it careened erratically downwards, punching through flimsy billboards and sending Valerie flying through blackened plaster and broken glass.

 

She cried out as one twisted piece of metal pierced her side. Her hands found their way to reflexively cover the wound as she curled in on herself. Warm wetness seeped through her fingers as she rolled to a painful stop in the third story office of some forgotten workplace.

 

Dan grinned as he floated in through the gaping breach in the wall, charging another blast. “It was nice playing with you, Val.”

 

Valerie closed her eyes. Tears painted dark clean tracks through the dust on her cheeks, stinging her cuts on their way down. They pooled at her throat and plopped lazily to the filthy floor.

 

“I’m sorry.” She choked, a hoarse whisper. “Fentons. Dad. I wish I could do better.”

 

All that was left was waiting for the end. She heard the ghost shoot, felt the heat of the plasma approaching in slow-motion. It never struck her.

 

Distantly, she could hear Dan cursing. He was baring his teeth on the other side of a filmy green… shield. Valerie hissed through her teeth, wrenching back control over her blurred vision. She could see a pair of legs standing before her, and they were stupidly innocuous.

 

Tight black leggings hugged the stranger’s calves, covered up midway by heavy grey combat boots that reached up to just below the knee. The stranger shifted in place. The scuffing of their boots on the ruined floor sounded like rolling thunder to Valerie’s muddled ears. She could just barely make out a green-trimmed Fenton Thermos swinging at their hip.

 

Dan howled. “Look at you!” There was triumph in his voice. “You’re just as bad as me! Worse, even! A little cannibal!”

 

The stranger cried out. Valerie groped for her gun, fingers closing shakily around the barrel. She righted the weapon, finding the trigger. Bang. Right past the stranger, right through Dan’s unsuspecting chest. The evil ghost roared his displeasure, and in a blur of monochrome he disappeared into the clear blue sky.

 

With a soft fizzling sound the shield dropped away. The stranger mumbled something Valerie couldn’t hear.

 

Her vision wavered. All she could hear was the blood rushing in her ears. There was a firm hand on her shoulder, a wink of light.

 

Nothing.  


 

* * *

 

 

The sound of a crackling fire drew Valerie back into consciousness.

 

“Wha-?” She tried to speak, but something wet bubbled up in her lungs and she stopped, choking.

 

“Don’t try to talk,” a low voice told her. Definitely male. Her surroundings swam unsteadily into focus: the dark walls of some crumbled warehouse. She could see the faint purple of an evening sky above.

 

She was lying on her back. Arbitrary inspection of her injuries added up to a huge puncture in her abdomen, and too many bruises to count, but other than some small scratches she was grateful to be unharmed. The stranger had wrapped the stab wound up tight.

 

There was a crunching of gravel that travelled around her field of vision. Valerie didn’t like not being able to see him. She winced, hissing sharply as she tried to sit up, but found two firm hands pushing her back down.

 

“Don’t,” the voice said again. His hands were gentle and flitting, as though afraid he might break her if he touched her too hard. “You’re hurt bad.”

 

Valerie growled at him. “Who the fuck’re you?” It came out more of a strangled gurgle than anything, but the stranger at least had the decency to be appropriately miffed. His footsteps drew back. When he didn’t answer, she grew impatient. “Tell me! Now!”

 

His voice wavered when he finally spoke again. “Please. Don’t hurt yourself.” He shuffled around so that Valerie could feel the toes of his boots brushing her curly hair. The stranger bent so that his face was over hers.

 

Inquisitive blue eyes stared back at her. His skin was pale in the firelight, and the flickering shadows painted dark bruises beneath his eyes. His mouth was pulled into a concerned frown, heavy brows drawn up and together in a look of distant bewilderment. She could see faint black stubble tracing his jawline, and a miserable little goatee painted a dark spot on his chin. Locks of straight black hair spilled around his face, shaggy bangs landing between his eyes. It looked like he had more hair, pulled up at the back of his head, but the dark shape blurred into the shadows.

 

“I want a name,” she barked.

 

The stranger made a face. His grimace stretched a deep scar at the corner of his mouth, and he worried his lip. “I’m not sure you’ll like what you hear,” he confessed. His voice was surprisingly deep considering his boyish face, and it thrummed uncomfortably close to the rolling drawl of her arch-enemy: smooth and slow like honey. Likely to be poisoned.

 

In retrospect, issuing one-sided demands to a stranger with the ability to easily leave her for dead was not the best idea, but this man seemed blessedly patient. “Tell me!”

 

He sighed, and the puff of cool breath on her face made Valerie flinch. “Let me help you up,” he said evasively. “I have food. We can talk over supper.”

 

“You’re gonna tell me everything.” It was supposed to be commanding, but the phrase slipped out like a question.

 

“I will,” the man agreed meekly, and Valerie could feel his cool hands hook under her arms. It took all her self-control not to squirm in his grip, but he was generously brief with the touch. With careful slowness, he eased her into a sitting position against the wall. Bricks dug painfully into the small of her back, but it was better than lying on the ground like an idiot. Valerie reached up to bat debris from her close-cropped curls, and the stranger waited patiently as she situated herself.

 

He was without a doubt dangerous. A thin jacket was draped over his shoulders, but Valerie was sure he had something tucked into the inner lining. His arms were coiled with wiry muscle. Valerie could see many scars. A blue-striped ribbon hung around his throat, but whatever sort of medallion it bore was tucked into a white-and-red T-shirt. He crouched easily just beside her, faceted blue eyes watching her carefully. Valerie could see a thermos at his belt, and what looked suspiciously like the hilt of a knife peeking up from his boot.

 

She waited for him to draw a weapon and do something horrible, like assault her or threaten her for information, but he only dropped to his knees and pulled a limp purple book bag from the darkness.

 

The stranger rifled idly through the bag, tongue peeking out from between his fair lips as he felt around in the dark. He pulled out a package, a brown paper bag, and thrust it towards Valerie.

 

“Eat,” he commanded firmly, but not unkindly.

 

Valerie glared defiantly up at the stranger. “Why should I? Who’s to say you haven’t poisoned it?”

 

His ice-blue gaze softened a little at that. “If I wanted you dead I could’ve left you with…” An unreadable, stricken expression twisted the stranger’s face as he mumbled, “Him.”

 

“Fine.” She took the bag in her shaking, bloodied hands. Her rescuer paused and fretted a little, cupping her palm with his own fingers, helping her to open the package and remove what was inside. As humiliating as it was, she was grateful for the assistance.

 

Politely, he shuffled back into his crouching position and allowed her some space.

 

The meat and cheese sandwich that he produced was painfully ordinary. “Where did you get _bread_?” Valerie breathed, mouth watering despite herself. The stranger reached up to rub his neck sheepishly, cheeks darkening.

 

“Long story,” he said. Again with the evasion. “But that’s not important.” He waited patiently as she wolfed down the sandwich, then dropped out of his crouch and lowered his rump to the ground. “I owe you some answers.”

 

“You do.”

 

He narrowed his eyes, one coal-dark brow cocked up to his hairline. A knowing little smirk danced on his lips, and Valerie resisted the urge to smack it right off his face. She didn’t need to, though, as his expression turned serious.

 

“I’m-” was all he could say before an explosion rocked the warehouse. He clenched his teeth in a grimace, eyes flashing dangerously in the dark. He whipped his head to Valerie. “Sorry,” he growled. “I’ll explain everything later!”

 

And then the warehouse roof was blown clean off.

 

“I keep having issues with pesky do-gooders like you,” Dan crowed, fangs bared. His form was haloed by cloudy moonlight and dust as he floated overhead. Ectoplasmic power pooled along his forearms, lighting his face in ghastly green light. “You can’t beat me!”

 

The stranger snarled, an inhuman sound. Valerie tensed, drawing herself up against the wall as best she could as he took his place between her and her enemy. “Back off! I’m stronger now!”

 

Dan scoffed. With a flash of white light the stranger turned into something very familiar: a half-ghost, the spitting image of Danny Phantom. He pushed off the ground, launching himself at the full-ghost with all his might. They collided in an instant, and the brawl began. Danny scrabbled at Dan’s defenses, throwing balls of ecto-energy from his fists.

 

The full-ghost actually seemed surprised - Valerie sure was - when the Phantom lookalike broke his shield after only three blasts. With a snarling battle-cry, the halfa’s fist connected with Dan’s chin. She winced at the sound of crackling bone, but relief seeped into her chest as he pushed further, battering his counterpart into submission.

 

Dan had had enough. He flung the Phantom’s slim form into the ground. Glowing green ectoplasm spurted from between his lips as he made impact, unblinking green eyes staring up at the ceiling.

 

Nursing his broken jaw, Dan snarled. “I’ll be back,” he promised, and flew off into the night.

 

This other Phantom grumbled darkly as he removed himself from the small crater in the dirt. “I don’t like this,” he mused to no one in particular. “He’s planning something.” He twisted, leaning back until Valerie could hear a faint _pop_ as his spine realigned. “I’ll feel _that_ tomorrow.”

 

It took only a moment for him to remember her presence. “Are you alright, Valerie?”

 

She flinched as he reached out towards her. It was an irrational response, given he looked nothing like Dan, but the display of power was terrifying. Without responding, she stared a little more. Cataloguing the differences would help. One, two, three…

 

He was well-built, and the close-fitting costume made sure she could tell, but he was much smaller than Dan. This Dan Phantom was more willowy and tall like the men on Maddie’s side, rather than being as huge as Jack. Dan was huge. He had tweaked his costume, too-- still in a  black hazmat suit, (Dan’s was white at the top) but reinforced with extra padding in key areas: hands, knees, wrists, and elbows,  (Dan didn’t care for defense) along with some thinner layering along his shoulders.

 

A silvery belt secured two Fenton Thermoses over his back, (Dan didn’t collect; he only killed) and an ectogun hung at his waist. Green-tinted goggles had been pushed up onto his forehead, mussing his shock of white hair. She could see his little ragged ponytail-- his hair was only barely long enough for it-- flaring out from the back of his head like a halo. Little wisps of semitransparent flame spiralled up from the end, while the rest of his head looked mercifully solid.

 

His ears were a little tapered, but not overtly inhuman (Dan’s were long and sharp) and Valerie could see a little rounded fang flash in the dark as his mouth moved, (Dan’s were like bent steak knives) but he was surprisingly human.

 

“Val?” He snapped his fingers in front of her face. “You in there?”

 

“You’re from the past, aren’t you?”

 

Danny shook his head, and in a brief flash of light he was human again. “Alternate timeline.”

 

She arched a brow. “How old are you?”

 

“Twenty-four,” he cautioned, pale eyes curious. He raised his hands, and they glowed with watery blue light. “C’mere,” he said, kneeling down beside her. Valerie shied away, but he shook the power from one hand and put it on her shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’ve got healing powers.”

 

“Really?”

 

Danny nodded pleasantly. “That guy,” he made that stricken face again. “Went bad before he had the chance to ally with the Far Frozen. He’s an evil angry ghost, but _I’m_ an evil...ish angry ice elemental ghost.” He glanced up at her with inquisitive eyes. “I think that’s an upgrade, no?”

 

Valerie stifled a smile. “I’d forgotten how cute you were, back when you were good.”

 

His cheeks darkened, but Danny said nothing as she opened up, exposing her wounded side to him. He nodded in acknowledgement, running his cold hands over the wound. Valerie could almost feel the flesh knitting back together, but she focused on Danny’s face instead. His lip was caught between his teeth, eyes cast down as he focused on his work.

 

It made her ache.

 

“There,” he said, finally extricating his hands from the wound. “That should ease the pain some, and you’re patched up a bit, but it’s not a long-term solution. I’m still better at breaking stuff than fixing it.”

 

She smiled weakly up at him. “I appreciate the sentiment.” With only a little help, she stood, and took inventory of her weapons. Her guns were still mostly intact, but the jet-sled would need repairs before she could use it again. “We need to get to Fentonworks.”

 

Danny tipped his head. “It’s still here?” At Valerie’s nod, his expression softened. “I take it your ride’s out of commission?”

 

“Busted,” she admitted.

 

“I can get us there,” he said, a little meekly. “Your dad’s there, right?”

 

“And a few others. There’s barely anyone left now that the shield’s down, and we’re running out of food.”

 

The halfa looked pensive, brows knit. “Sorry,” he finally said, and returned to ghost form. He snuffed the fire with a quick blast of ice and took Valerie’s hand in his own. “I can fly us there. We’ll be quick.”

 

Reluctantly, she nodded, wrapping her fingers tight around his wrist. Danny pushed off.

 

A tingling sensation poked at her nerves as the both of them turned invisible. The halfa navigated with finesse she hadn’t known he could possess, banking cautiously around one broken building. His flight was distantly playful, but practical. She almost wished he would loop and spin: maybe he might take her mind off of things. He hesitated just in front of the Fentonworks building. A shimmering green ghost-shield circled the building.

 

He set Valerie down just outside the shield, taking human form before tentatively poking at the barrier. His finger passed through the green, and it bounced back like gelatin.

 

Casting a nervous glance at her as she passed through the shield, he stepped after her, wincing. Nothing happened. He blinked rapidly, shooting a pointed look at Valerie. “You should get that fixed,” he advised. She didn’t justify him with a response.

 

There were a few people milling about what had formerly been the Fenton household’s living room. Everyone stopped when the two stumbled in.

 

“Val!” Damon Grey, her father, shouldered through the crowd. Even missing a limb, he carried himself with military dignity. “Your sled signal was lost! I’m so glad you’re okay.”

 

Danny shuffled awkwardly to the side as the two embraced. Valerie planted a fond kiss on the top of her father’s balding brown head before stepping back. Chatter filled the room. Danny could recognize some Amity Park residents. Some he could not. A man that looked a lot like Dash, albeit much thinner and lined about the eyes, floated through the crowd.

 

“Who is this?” Damon asked, dark eyes narrowed. He was a little too quick for Danny’s liking.

 

He thrust out his hand to shake. “I’m,” a hesitant pause. “James. Long story. I can help you stop Dan.”

 

Valerie shot him a questioning look. At his flippant shrug, she rolled her eyes, but the tension never left her body. “C’mon. Let’s go down to the lab and you can tell us what you know.”

 

Damon didn’t look particularly pleased. “Are you sure, Valerie? How do we know we can trust him?”

 

She hesitated a moment, but eventually nodded. “Yes. He saved my life.” And with that she grabbed Danny by the wrist, hauling him through what was once a living room and down the stairs to the Fentonworks lab. Her father followed close behind, fretting.

 

Valerie tucked her helmet underarm and drew a cable from the mainframe. She hooked it up and sat down at the nearest console, typing with practiced ease. “I can recover the video footage from my helmet,” she explained. “You can see there how he’s helped.”

 

Danny nodded mechanically. He could feel Damon’s suspicious gaze on his back as he stood over Valerie, watching as she extracted the video.

 

It was grainy and the color was tinted a little too warm, but the picture was clear enough. Dust floated over the display. Everything was blurry in her memory. Valerie’s head had been spinning but the helmet had captured everything clearly: Dan was advancing, an ectoblast charging between his fingers. There was a blur just as he fired: Danny’s legs entered the frame. The camera wobbled, but captured the ghostly shield he’d conjured, captured Dan’s cursing. The camera shook again, this time more violently, but there was a click and scrape before an ectogun went off and shot Dan through the chest.

 

Danny couldn’t move. He could feel his face burning. It had audio.

 

“ _A little cannibal!_ ”

 

He grit his teeth, stifling the growl that built in his chest. Valerie stopped the playback and turned on him. Damon stepped protectively forward.

 

“I wasn’t awake enough for that one,” Valerie confessed. “I passed out right then.” Her dark eyes turned to Danny as he seethed. "I should've known! There's always something with you, Fenton!"

 

“What does that mean?” Damon demanded. His voice was low and dangerous. Danny was in no place to resist. “What were you planning for my daughter?”

 

He raised his hands defensively, taking a few instinctive steps back. The wall was right at his back. “Nothing,” he said forcefully, then faltered. “I don’t eat humans.”

 

Realization dawned on Damon’s face. “You’re like _him_.”

 

“I _am_ him,” Danny snapped, teeth bared. He realized his mistake too late, shutting his mouth with a clack of colliding teeth. “Valerie,” he pleaded, eyes wide. “I explained this to you!”

 

“Alternate timeline,” she said sourly. “What’s to say you two aren’t the same? You've got the dark streak.”

 

Danny worried his lip. “Listen. I know this is lame, but you need to hear me out.” He took a step forward only to backpedal as Damon leaned threateningly over him. “Ghosts need ectoplasm. That includes halfas.” He cast a pleading gaze over the Greys. “My options were ‘eat ghosts’ and ‘fuck up humans.’ What was I supposed to choose?”

 

Damon’s face turned ashen at the raw desperation in the younger man's voice. He looked impossibly old in that moment, and Danny wilted in sympathy. The halfa lifted a tentative hand, reaching out. When neither Grey reacted adversely, he closed his fingers on Damon’s meaty shoulder and gave a reassuring squeeze.

 

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “You didn’t know.”

 

Valerie wouldn’t meet his gaze. Her dark eyes were hooded and fixed on the floor. “Yeah.”

 

“No,” Damon sighed. He shrugged Danny’s hand off, clasping the younger man’s slim fingers with his own single hand. “Don’t apologize, son. You’re something different. It’s not fair of us to do this to you.” His dark eyes flitted over Danny’s face. “It’s _Daniel_ James, right?”

 

The young halfa laughed lightly. Relief bloomed in Valerie’s chest at the sound, warm and genuine and tempered by fondness. “Yes sir,” he admitted. “But don’t be sorry. Times are hard, and it’s kind of my fault.”

 

Valerie snorted. She cuffed Danny roughly on the back of the head. “Shuddup,” she mumbled, a little note of playfulness painting her tone. “Let’s get to work, Fenton: show us what you can do."

 

“Gladly,” Danny said, grinning. “I’m gonna make that asshole wish he’d never escaped from that goddamn thermos.”  
  



	12. Bang

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Payback time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just really want Danny to beat Dash up tbh.

Sometimes Danny forgets that his ability to invoke fear doesn’t work on meatheads like Dash Baxter, even if most other people keep a subconsciously wide berth.

 

He slams Danny against a locker and makes some idiotic play on his last name, again. It’s about as clever as a rock and somehow infinitely more useless.

 

Today is not just a bad day- it’s a Bad Day. Spectra showed up last night to ridicule the halfa’s recent uptick in territorial behavior, which Danny is very much aware of and  _ working on it, thanks _ . He has the pleasure of being kept up till two and going to bed miserable, then sleeping a little too long and having to skip breakfast. He’s late to school anyway. His morning class has a physics test given back. He gets a precariously low C and a letter on its way home to his parents. Danny just wants to slink into his lair and brood there for a good few hours.

 

As fate would have it, he can’t. Dash Baxter didn’t even get a D, and he’s  _ pissed _ . Somewhere in the quarterback’s walnut-sized brain, his sub-amoebic synapses have fired off some totally ridiculous connections between Fenton and failure. Danny’s supposed to take the hit, but he really, really wants to smash that pretty quarterback face in. Dash is going out of his way to piss him off today, and Danny’s patience is wearing thin.

 

“I’ve had a frustrating morning,” he growls at the jock, schooling his face into a neutral expression as he’s shoved against the locker. The cool metal is sharp against his back, and digs in through his clothes. “I really don’t have time for this.”

 

Dash just laughs. “Think you’re a tough guy, Fentonio?” He shakes Danny harder, fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt. Some faceless letter-jacket lackeys laugh from behind their leader, but Danny doesn’t listen or care.

 

He’s seeing red.

 

In a fluid motion he grabs his attacker’s arm and twists. Dash lets out an undignified yelp, drawing back and unceremoniously dropping Danny to the floor. The halfa feints backwards, pretending to stumble.

 

Baxter takes the bait, growling and throwing his fist at Danny, who wastes no time in twisting nimbly out of the way. Dash’s hand meets the metal, hard. His knuckles are bloody now from making contact with the hinges.

 

There is a circle of kids around now, all intrigued by the goings-on. Danny has never fought back in three years, but now he weaves and bobs around Dash’s blows like a trained goddamn ninja. Dash isn’t used to people fighting back. He cries out as Danny shoots forward, extending his leg to catch on Dash’s ankle. The top-heavy boy stumbles as his balance is compromised, and is thrown shoulder-first into one of the boys behind him. He grips his shoulder and shoots a venomous glare. The blood from his knuckles is smearing all over the white sleeve of his letter jacket. 

  
  
Any chanting of “fight,” has died now. Danny is distantly aware of Sam and Tucker calling his name, of teachers shouting to push through the crowd, but he doesn’t listen or care.

 

All that matters is his opponent. Dash shouts again and throws another punch, but his target doesn’t even flinch-- one slender arm shoots up and thin fingers close around Baxter’s meaty fist. The twiggy little shit has stopped him mid-swing. He wrenches his arm away, growling.

 

Danny makes a sound that is almost a laugh, but he isn’t smiling. “You done?” He asks, arching one coal-dark brow. He looks completely and utterly apathetic, and that just won’t do.

 

“No,” Dash growls. “Quit it! I’m stronger than you!” He lunges, but his blow meets only empty air as his target sidesteps.

 

“I beg to differ,” Danny says nonchalantly. He sounds, of all things,  _ bored _ .

 

Someone shoves through the crowd. “Alright, big guy. That’s enough.” The smaller of the two boys turns to face Sam, hooded blue eyes gleaming.

 

“Sure we can’t play a little longer?” He asks, a lopsided grin tugging at his lips.

 

“No,” she says, smiling back. "I've been waiting for this day, but it's not worth sending Dash to the hospital. Wait till you're less moody." Danny wilts a little, but shrugs. The tension in his shoulders melts away as he shoves his hands in his pockets, stepping over to face Dash.

 

The quarterback is seething. “This was fun. Let’s do it again.”

 

“I can snap you like an egg, Fenturd.”

 

Danny laughs at that. “You really need to work on your insults, Baxter.” He pats his rival hard on the back and revels in his wincing. There must be bruises blooming on his shoulder from that fall. “See ya.”


	13. Belly of the Beast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's freezing, dude.

In being a ghost, Danny has a lair. Namely: his bedroom. It - his inner ghost - has settled into the small space on principle. Danny spends nearly all his free time there, keeps all his most prized possessions there. It just makes sense.

 

The symptoms, for lack of a better term, start a few months after the Accident. Jazz mentions it first. “It’s a little cold in here,” she says without warning. Danny shoots her a pointed look, and she closes the door with an eyeroll. Danny can’t keep his eyes off the door for another half-hour, hackles raised and refusing to settle.

 

It gets colder within weeks. His well-meaning father has gone a little nuts trying to find the source of the chill, and piles the room with plush duvets and soft pillows to “fend off the draft.” Those join the most formative materials for his “nest,” a haphazard pile of blankets and discarded clothes thrown across his bed.

 

Tucker and Sam haven’t gone without comment. The room feels “creepy,” they say. The room is “darker,” and “foreboding,” and “instills an awful feeling of being watched, dude.” Danny begs to differ. It feels like home to him. It smells more like him, feels cool and close and safe.

 

“It feels like a dungeon,” Sam says. “And not the good kind.”

 

Danny’s face burns with flush as he stammers, “Yikes.”

 

He’s sure to pull a little more spiteful cold at that, tucking a few extra shadows into the corners, establishing a little more control over the environment. It  _ is _ his domain, after all. Needless to say, Sam is not pleased to open the door for study night.

 

“Boo,” is all it takes.


	14. Aching

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: sexual themes, internalized homophobia

The young man’s face was fair, freckled, and boyishly handsome: angular but still round, with a charming ski-jump nose and soft pink lips. His crystalline blue eyes were framed by thick, dark lashes, heavy brows above them drawn up in a lazy expression as a half-smile pulled at his lips.

 

His body was lean and sinewy, coiled with hard, wiry muscle-- not like the gaudy bulk of a quarterback, but practical and concise and lithe like a swimmer. He was predatory, with long slender arms and legs, a narrow, sculpted chest, even visible abs painting modest contours along the line of his navel, where fine black hairs drew a trail down past the loose waistband of his boxers.

 

_ Dash’s _ boxers, borrowed. He could see the other man’s generous bulge against the seam of his shorts, and caught himself staring a long moment too late.

 

“Like what you see?” The stranger - not a stranger, really - purred, light baritone low and sultry. He caught his lower lip between his teeth, peering expectantly up at Dash through shaggy black bangs. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

 

Heat pooled in his abdomen, rushed to his face. Everything was hazy around Dash as he drew obediently forward. Before he could blink his clothes were off, and only in his underwear he pulled himself onto his bed.

 

“Danny,” he whispered, and the other man smiled. He eased himself into Dash’s lap, squirming and wrapping his legs around the bigger man’s waist. Slender fingers combed through blonde hair as he pressed their bare chests together.

 

He could feel Danny’s lips against his earlobe, and Dash nearly melted at the feeling of gentle teeth on his flesh. “ _ Dashiel _ ,” he hissed, and the puff of warm air on his neck only served to arouse him further. No one used his full name, but it felt so right when Danny did it.

 

The blonde hummed wordlessly back, planting hasty kisses along the smaller man’s porcelain collarbone, moving up his neck until Danny grabbed his head. It was more forceful than Dash had expected, passionate, but still gentle as one slender, calloused hand cupped his warm cheek. The other was open-palmed over Dash’s chest, gentle fingers tracing firm muscle before looping around his neck.

 

Danny deepened the kiss with tooth and tongue, nibbling at his partner’s lips and filling his mouth with hot wet muscle. Dash reciprocated easily, and together they each explored the moist cavern of the other’s mouth.

 

Moaning into Dash’s slick mouth, Danny drew away some, glancing up at him with hooded periwinkle eyes. He closed his teeth suddenly on Dash’s lip, and despite the stinging Dash found himself even more aroused by the blood in his mouth.

 

His face burned, and pressure built in his groin. Who knew Fenton was such a tease? The smaller man thrust his bony hips against Dash’s growing erection. He bit back a whimper, grinding needily against Danny.

 

He didn’t stop, drawing it out with sharp stinging bites over Dash’s neck, lapping at his skin with a dripping pink tongue. He untangled one hand from his partner’s sweaty curls to trace his happy trail down to his waistband, teasing fingers ghosting over his need.

 

“Please,” Dash begged, leaning back onto the pillows, belly up and legs spread.

 

Without missing a beat, Danny advanced, wiry-strong arms pinning the larger man down against the hazy white sheets. He planted messy kisses on Dash’s neck, huffing hot breath against his pectorals before moving further downward. Each kiss grew rougher and rougher and now Dash’s boxers were down-

 

* * *

 

He sat up in bed with a yelp. Blinking bleary sleep away, Dash glanced furtively at his bedside clock-- just after five. He wriggled awkwardly out of sweat-soaked blankets, kicking himself as he noticed the conspicuous tent in his underwear.

 

The heat of the dream pooled in his abdomen and throbbed steadily into his lap. Dash growled under his breath and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Pookie was curled peacefully on his little dog bed in the corner, whistling through his nose in his sleep. The house was mercifully silent otherwise.

 

Dash shuffled stiffly out of his room and to the bathroom, grabbing a towel from his laundry pile on the way. He set the clean white towel on the sink and skirted the bathtub, sticking an arm around the shower curtain. He fumbled a little before finding the knob, and wrenched it sharply on.

 

Beads of icy water struck his bare forearm, but he barely noticed. He waited a long, numb moment before beginning to strip. He pulled his tank-top over his head and discarded it on the floor, then stepped out of his sweaty boxers.

 

Operating on autopilot could only get him so far, and as he entered the shower Dash was painfully reminded of his totally weird sex-fantasy dream.  _ Fenton _ , of all people? He ducked into the freezing spray with a little more vigor than necessary, and sighed in relief through chattering teeth as the worst of his desire receded.

 

Dash dated  _ girls _ , though, and he reminded himself so as he tipped his head into the water. He dated girls and they dated him. Lots of girls wanted to date him but he only wanted to date the prettiest girls. All girls. All the time.

 

Girls. He liked girls.

He had dated Paulina, the most beautiful, popular girl on campus. Maybe in the whole town. Things hadn’t worked out, and in the back of his mind he suspected that he knew exactly why. Dash stomped the little thought out. Paulina was fickle and girlish and kind of dumb, even to him.

 

Something just lead him to, inevitably, drive his girlfriends away. But he liked girls, and only girls.

 

That stupid dream begged to differ. Dash felt the plastic shampoo bottle give a little between his fingers as he squeezed it into one hand and started to lather.

 

He rinsed the soap from his hair and started to scrub his body. There were still faint yellow bruises around his wrist and on his shoulder from the week before, when, of all people,  _ Fenton _ had beat him up. In all honesty, he was still reeling from that one. Danny was strong.  _ Really _ strong. Dash had never met someone like that-- he was six feet and two hundred pounds of quarterback bulk. If some rare highschool goliath was strong enough to stand up to him, they were usually to cowardly to try.

 

Danny had been  _ letting _ Dash use him as a personal punching bag for years. That was scary. The dream he’d had must have been from… adrenaline, or something, he figured. His brain was intimidated - and his pride still stung more than the bruises did - by that unassuming scarecrow, draped in baggy clothes that belied the raw strength beneath.

 

The goth girl had, blithely, mentioned the possibility of getting sent to the hospital if she let her weird geek friend go all-out: Dash believed her. Big guys were scary with all their bulk-- that’s what made Dash so good at what he did-- but somehow Danny was scarier. It felt almost like a betrayal. His eyes told him  _ weak _ . His wounded pride told him  _ fat chance _ .

 

But that all made sense. Danny looked small and helpless, but he wasn’t, and Dash’s brain didn’t know what to make of it because he’d always been on top. That made sense. It was a one-time thing, he decided, and shut off the water.

 

* * *

 

Kwan Li was Dash’s best friend, and his smooth olive face was stretched into the stupidest shit-eating grin he’d ever seen.

 

“Dude,” he choked between shuddering laughs, wiping mirthful tears from his eye. “You’re so flippin’  _ hopeless _ .”

 

Dash bristled, albeit halfheartedly. “Shuddup,” he snapped, cheeks burning. He slammed his locker shut with a little more force than was strictly necessary. Books tucked under one arm, he stalked down the hall with Kwan trailing easily alongside him.

 

Li chuckled again, holding his hands up in surrender. “Testy much,” he teased, throwing one strong hand onto Dash’s shoulder. “Seriously though. You’re in comic-book puppy love, dude.” A mischievous glint lit his dark eyes as he leaned against his blonde friend. “We gotta do somethin’ about it.”

 

“Like what?” He demanded bitterly, not really expecting an answer. “Fenton hates my guts. He could probably waste me if he wanted to.” An image of Danny’s cocksure grin, that wicked gleam in his high-noon eyes, flitted through Dash’s brain. It had been scary when the usually-placid nerd had blown a fuse last week, but ultimately unsurprising: Danny  _ was _ the son of ghost hunters, and Amity Park was swarming with the things. He probably kept an ecto-pistol in his hoodie at all times.

 

Man, that was hot. Badass, even.

 

Kwan’s hand drifted into his field of vision and Dash started a little. “There you are,” his friend soothed easily, then his smile turned wicked. “You don’t have a problem with that, do you?”

 

It took only a second for the implication to find its way to his face. Dash could feel the heat stinging his eyes and crawling down his neck. “Oh my  _ God _ ,” he groused, “please don’t.”

 

That dream, though. Being “wasted” by Fenton might not be so bad… but then again, it was a fever dream. He was probably a wuss after all, and Dash was going crazy over some weird figment of his imagination.

 

Or not.

 

If his hands weren’t so full he’d be tearing at his hair.

 

“Seriously, though,” Kwan continued. “You’re a douche to Fenton ‘cause you like him, amirite?” 

 

“No!” Dash said, a little too quickly. He could feel his cheeks burn. He wished he would just drop dead right there. At least the chatter in the hallway was mercifully loud enough to keep their moderate-volume conversation more or less veiled from prying ears. “Yes,” he corrected himself, gritting his teeth. “Maybe. Not at first. I don’t know.”

 

He must have sounded just as pitiful as he felt, because Kwan patted him soothingly on the back. “There there,” he cooed, only a little bit mockingly. “We can work with this, dude. You can win his heart, a hundred percent.”

 

Resisting the urge to pout took an embarrassing amount of willpower. “How? What’ll we do?” He sighed, pressing his forehead against the cool metal of his locker. “Didn’t you hear me before? Fenton hates me.”

 

Kwan scoffed. “Duh.” He pulled Dash up by the collar of his letter jacket, corralling him through the dense crowd of students towards their first-period class. “Which is why you need to start by making him  _ not _ hate you.”

 

The blank look said it all. “Besides,” Dash argued, a little sullenly as they crossed the threshold into a currently-empty classroom. “I’m a closet case anyway, and’m supposed to be a ‘lister.” He scowled hard at the tile beneath his sneakers. “I’d be ruined anyway, and Fenton wouldn’t wanna even look at me, let alone go out with me.”

 

“You’re projecting,” was his friend’s sing-song retort. “Danny’s a nice kid, nicer than us anyway.” He shoved his friend playfully into the desk beside his own, setting his books down. “Start with calling him by his first name.”

 

Dash made a face. “How’ll that help? It’s like, nothing at all.”

 

“Old habits die hard,” Kwan cautioned. “Baby steps, dude. Baby steps.”

 

“This is stupid,” grumbled Dash, sliding into his chair. “He hates me. Has for years, dude.”

 

Li rolled his dark eyes. “We went over this,” he laughed. “He’s only gonna hate you if you give him a reason to. Just try it.”

 

He’d give it a try.

 

* * *

 

This was horrible. The dream had been bad, but at least those feelings could be attributed to weird dream logic or REM-sleep malfunctions, or something dumb like that. There was no escaping reality.

 

Danny was thirteen minutes late and Dash felt his face burn as the smaller boy stumbled into the classroom. One long-fingered hair was still frantically untangling his sopping black hair, his face was flushed and his body was still damp from having showered. The sleeves of his T-shirt clung to his biceps. The dream hadn’t been too far off.

 

He looked tired all through class, eyes half-lidded and struggling to focus. Dash could see little cartoon ghosts and fantastic creatures doodled haphazardly across the margins of his notes. He couldn’t help but smile at that.

 

Still, paying attention was impossible. Dash sleepwalked through his morning classes and through the beginning of lunch until Kwan intervened.

 

“Dude,” he said as though it held some deeper meaning, brows at his hairline. “You’re in so deep it’s not even funny. Where’d this come from anyway?”

 

Dash grumbled and crossed his arms, refusing to make eye contact with anything but the sandwich beneath his nose. “Shuddup.”

 

Kwan laughed at that and reached over the table, plucking some fries from his best friend’s lunch tray. “Make a move, already. Say hi. Apologize for being an ass. Do a little dance.” He shrugged flippantly and Dash only felt worse. “Do what you want, man, just quit being a pussy about it.”

 

“Easy for you to say,” he retorted. “You’re not the one who has to deal with it.”

 

Another infuriating shrug. “Not my fault. You’re the one who decided to be a grade-A douche.”

 

Dash sighed into his food, contemplating the pros and cons of just dropping his head onto the tray and dying there. “I know,” he finally admitted, face in his hands. “But I can’t undo it and I don’t even know if I really  _ like _ Fenton!”

 

“Danny,” Kwan corrected, sounding disappointed. A pause, then his question: “What d’you mean?”

 

“You know!” he cried, gesturing helplessly. He remembered that he was in a public space and lowered his voice, but continued. “Maybe it’s just physical. I’m sure it is. I bet I don’t really like Fent-  _ Danny _ at all and I’ll just make things worse!”

 

“Shush,” Kwan chastised. “Dude, you’re like, an actual schoolgirl.”

 

Dash seethed. “No’m not!”

 

“Then let me say it again,” the other boy said forcefully, steepling his fingers on the lunch table. “Quit bein’ a pussy. You’re just making yourself even more miserable. Danny’s a nice guy-- I sincerely doubt he bites.” Kwan grinned at that, a vicious gleam in his eye. “Unless you like that sort of thing.”

 

Dash’s flustered silence spoke volumes. “I hate you.”

 

“I know, now shoo.”

 

The quarterback sighed deeply through his nose, preparing to stand from the bench. He couldn’t do it, hands shaking. A rare spark of insight had him twisted in his seat, digging a sheet of loose-leaf paper from his backpack. It was sort of crumpled and stained blue by energy drinks, but it was good enough to write on.

 

_ Meet me in the locker room after sixth period (gym). Just to talk. _

_ -Dash _

 

With a deep breath, he crumpled the note into a ball and aimed, pulling his arm back. He threw, and nailed Fenton squarely in the back of the head. The smaller boy grumbled, rubbing the spot more out of wounded pride than actual pain, and opened the paper.

 

His piercing eyes flitted once, twice over the page, brow knit as he stared down at the sloppy letter. Dash saw him turn briefly to his geek friends, who were arguing animatedly about something stupid and not worth his attention.

 

Danny made eye contact with him, and he froze. Those mellow blue eyes were sharp and calculating, sizing up their target with a military sort of scrutiny. Dash felt naked beneath Danny’s gaze, and resisted the urge to flinch.

 

“I’ll be there,” he mouthed from across the room, coal-dark brows still furrowed as he examined the note in his hands, like a puzzle to be solved. It gave Dash a little thrill.

 

* * *

 

Gym class was the same as always. They were splitting up into partners to run laps and toss balls today-- Fenton and his tech-geek friend were attached at the hip as soon as the word was mentioned, much to Dash’s displeasure. Kwan darted off to team with Starr, but not without throwing a wink over his shoulder. He made sure to shove his friend into the goth girl as he went by.

 

“Watch it,” he heard her snap, and opened his mouth to reply in kind before faltering. Kwan was an evil genius.

 

After some pause, he forced the word out, albeit stiffly. “Sorry.”

 

The goth girl-- Sam, he thought her name was-- gaped at him like a fish. He didn’t say anything, and followed her like a duckling through the day’s exercises.

 

“Y’alright, buddy?” She was staring at him like he was a bug under a microscope. He subdued the urge to growl and ground out his response.

 

“I’m fine,” he managed. “Just thinking.”

 

Sam laughed, tugging at the neck of her gym shirt. “You’re hilarious.” When Dash didn’t respond with an attempted punch or uncreative insult, she swallowed her giggling to peer up at the quarterback.

 

He looked… not good. He was well-built, with smooth tan skin and a jawline that could cut glass, but his steel-blue eyes were shadowed with sleepless purple bruises. His broad shoulders sagged, and his usually-gelled blonde curls stuck askew from his head. He looked utterly defeated.

 

“What kinds of things does Fent- err,” he seemed to steel himself, “ _ Danny _ like?”

 

She snorted. “What’s it to you? Is it about that weird note from lunch?”

 

Dash could feel his face burning. He turned very deliberately away, disguising the motion by wiping sweat from his brow. The goth girl saw right through him, and she could feel her inquisitive gaze burning holes into his back as they jogged their laps.

 

“I have a problem,” he confessed, and that caught Sam’s interest.

 

“What with?” She asked, a sly note of curiosity creeping into her voice.

 

He hesitated. “You can’t tell anyone,” Dash pleaded gravely, gaze sliding towards Danny and Tucker as they ran. Foley was bent over and breathing hard while Fenton loped easy circles around his friend. He was fast, but lacking endurance, and soon joined the techno-geek in his resting.

 

“Does it have something to do with why you’re ogling my best friend?”

 

“I am  _ so dead _ ,” Dash groaned, burying his head in his hands. “If I said yes, would you promise not to tell?”

 

Sam shrugged. “S’long as it’s not dangerous.” She grinned sharply, a wicked gleam in her blue-violet eyes as she jerked her head towards Danny and Tucker. “And you know my standards for danger, Baxter.”

 

“Will you ever stop rubbing that in my face?”

 

“Nope. You had it coming.”

 

“Point,” Dash conceded. He slid to a stop, pulling Sam by the slender arm to the bleachers. He waved at Ms. Tetzlaff, and at her disaffected shrug he drew them both off to the side, and away from the class. Now all he had to do was formulate a good, measured excuse, and then he could get the info he needed-

 

“I’m gay,” he blurted out before he could stop himself. He felt the burning flush creep down from his hairline, stinging his cheeks and biting his ears.

 

Sam smiled, crossing her arms. “Tucker owes me twenty,” she declared good-naturedly. “Now what’s up with you and Danny?”

 

“Nothing, yet,” he confessed. “I just… I can’t stop thinkin’, you know? He totally wasted me and shit, but  _ dude, _ have you seen his  _ arms _ ?”

 

The goth scowled darkly. “So this is purely physical.” She stepped threateningly forward. “Danny’s not about that shit, y’know, so you can scram.”

 

Dash spluttered, eyes darting to the center of the space where the rest of the kids did their exercise. “No!” He insisted. “It’s not just that! See, this is why I want to know more about Fent- Danny. From you, yeah.”

 

“I see,” she drawled, sizing him up. “Let’s assume you’re telling the truth: I’m gonna lay down some rules.”

 

Dash nodded mutely, wringing his hands against his chest. When had a tiny little goth girl gotten so intimidating?

 

“One,” she began, holding up her pointer finger. “You give Danny the respect he deserves. That means no stupid nicknames, nothing.”

 

“Kwan said the same thing,” Dash agreed bitterly, but nodded along.

 

Sam arched an eyebrow, but asked no questions. “Two: Danny has a lot on his plate. He has secrets, and lots of them. You let Danny tell you shit when  _ he _ wants to, and not a moment sooner, got it?”

 

“Yes ma’am.”

 

“And Three: Danny can waste you in a second, but he’s not invincible-- he has feelings. If you hurt him  _ at all _ , you answer to  _ me _ . Capiche?”

 

Dash hadn’t known knuckles could make that sound before. He nodded vigorously.

 

“Good, now get ready to ask him yourself,” Sam laughed, and the schoolbell rang.

 

* * *

 

Danny always changed alone in the locker room. Didn’t like people looking at him, or something. He always ducked into one of the bathroom stalls instead, even if it made him late for class. Today was no different.

 

Dash was stuffing his gym shorts back into his own locker when Danny appeared-- not walked in, no, one moment he wasn’t there and then he was.

 

“You wanted to see me?” He drawled, making Dash jump. He pivoted to see his visitor leaning against the lockers without a care in the world, hands stuffed into his red hoodie pockets. When Dash remained silent, he continued, crossing his long arms over his chest. “I really hope you didn’t lure me here to do something idiotic, like waste me,” he tisked, shaking his head, and  _ wow Danny was hot when he was confident _ .

 

Tongue like lead in his mouth, Dash stumbled over his words. “N-no!” He stammered a little too quickly. “I just wanted to t-talk, y’know? Like on the note?”

 

Danny sighed, tossing his head. “Really.” He considered the quarterback with piercing blue eyes, and he could see the gears turning in his head. “Fine. Just spill and get it over with so I can go home.”

 

“Right.” Dash sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I know you’re pissed at me,” he began, and wilted as the object of his affections stifled a snort. “I know I’ve been a huge douche to you since like, forever--” He gestured helplessly, scanning Danny’s carefully neutral face. “Please! Please forgive me!” He stopped to cover his mouth, embarrassed at the outburst. “Just, after what happened on Friday, I guess I’ve been thinking a-and-- I’m so sorry, dude.”

 

Danny laughed like a hyena, throwing his head back and hugging his belly. “Man,” he sputtered, “You’re really entertaining, Baxter.” He wiped mock tears from the corner of his eye, grinning. “If  a little shove back was all it took I’d’ve done that  _ years _ ago.”

 

His cheeks burned. “Don’t rub it in,” he said. It was meant to be a demand, but when it came out it sounded more like begging.

 

Fenton stopped laughing then, and shot Dash a dazzling smile. His teeth were charmingly crooked and there was a cut on his chapped pink lips and he just looked so  _ Danny _ it made his chest ache.

 

“You’re forgiven, dude.” He thrust out a hand to shake, and Dash took it with only a little hesitation. “Sorry about roughin’ you up, by the way.” He looked sheepish, long fingers shifting their grip around Dash’s as he rubbed his neck with his free hand. “Kind of a reflex.”

 

Dash tipped his head. “Reflex? You’re like, a total beast. How is  _ that _ reflex?”

 

Danny flinched a little. “Ghost hunting,” he explained tersely, and pink blush dusted his pale cheeks. He was  _ adorable _ .

 

Guilt fluttered in Dash’s chest at that thought. He was sweet and trusting and forgiving and more than willing to give a second chance even after all the shitty things Dash’d done to him over the years. How was this okay?

 

The quarterback couldn’t help but wilt a little, sighing in relief. “Any chance I could make it up to you? We could go for like, coffee or something.”

 

“Nah,” Danny said, almost immediately, and waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it.”

 

For a moment he was ready to shrink and agree, but Dash stopped himself. “No,” he said, a little more forcefully. “I insist. I owe you, dude. Just tomorrow afternoon, to talk stuff over.”

 

Danny’s blush deepened, and he shrugged, sinking bashfully deeper into his hoodie. “It’s really no big deal, man. Bygones, and stuff.”

 

Dash made a face. “I don’t wanna just break even. Let me make it up to you, Danny.”

 

He perked up at the use of his real name, faceted blue eyes wide. Dash barely resisted the urge to swoon.

 

“If you really want to,” the smaller boy finally conceded, scuffing his sneakers on the tile. Without warning he stiffened, breath hitching. “Oh wow! Wouldja look at the time? I just remembered I have, uh-- a place! To be. Something to do.” 

 

He spun on his heel, waving over his shoulder, “Catch ya later, Dash!” He hesitated, the soles of his shoes squealing on the tile. He tossed his head, grinning over his shoulder. “I’ll see you after school tomorrow!”

 

And then he was gone, pelting down the hallway.

 

* * *

 

It was all Dash could do to keep from screaming.

 

Kwan laughed at him. “You have a date already? Real smooth, dude.”

 

“Shuddup. I just need to survive classes today and hang out with Fenton and see if he’s interested and then I can live my life.”

 

His friend rolled dark eyes, but made no comment. He grabbed Dash by the sleeve, pulling him back and steering him into the classroom. “First period’s here, remember?” At the blank look, Kwan sighed. “You’re going to be like this all day, aren’t you?”

 

“Yup,” Dash agreed shakily, popping the ‘p.’

  
  


The day slid along like a slug, excruciatingly slow. When the final bell rang Dash was out the door before anyone else, skidding to a hasty stop in front of the school building. He leaned against the pillar of a tree and waited, arms crossed and nervous feet tapping at the concrete.

 

He waited.

 

At five minutes he closed his eyes and listened to the rustling leaves and grumbling cars pass him by. Students chattered about inane things. He tuned them out and tried to focus on what he’d say to Danny.

 

At ten minutes his neck was sore from scraping against the bark of the tree. Restlessly, he started to pace, rifling through his bag to organize the books inside, then zipping it up again, then organizing again. The repetitive action soothed his frayed nerves. 

 

At twenty minutes Dash feared Danny had just decided not to come. Sighing in defeat, he slung his backpack over his shoulder and made to leave, gaze cast dejectedly towards the pavement. He was a fool, really. After all this, why would Danny want to reconcile? Stupid.

 

That thought was rescinded when the smaller teen came barrelling around the corner, vaulting over one of the schoolside hedges and skidding to a stop at the edge of the curb. He was breathing heavy, hard chest swelling and flattening beneath his unusually tight grey baseball shirt. Dash averted his eyes, not wanting to be caught staring.

 

“Sorry,” Danny panted, leaning on his knees to catch his breath. “Annoying… ghost… taken care of…”

 

“No problem,” Dash allowed. His throat felt like sandpaper. His hands hovered nervously over Danny’s back as he moved to give him a gentle pat, but never actually made contact. When the other boy straightened and shot a sheepish grin, he asked, “Do you just wanna go to the Nasty Burger?”

 

“Sure,” he said pleasantly. “Anywhere’s good.”

 

Dash nodded numbly. “We can just grab some sodas,” he said, more to himself than Danny. “Fries, if you want ‘em.”

 

Danny nodded, grinning. “Let’s go,” he said, and started to walk. The fast food joint was mercifully close to Casper High, so it took only a few awkward minutes to reach the venue. The silence they shared wasn’t quite uncomfortable, but it fell far short of being amicable, and left Dash hanging in an uncomfortable limbo.

 

They shuffled into the diner and took their seats, calling for colas and some fried snacks. Dash watched without speaking as Danny ate and drank: his Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat as he swallowed, and the sweating plastic cup of soda wept cool drops of water over the sharp lines of calloused knuckles. He ate in endearingly eager bites, smiling and “mmm”ing every few mouthfuls.

 

“Stuff here never gets old,” he commented good-naturedly, hazy blue eyes darting to Dash. “Sorry for hogging--” he stopped abruptly, brows knit with concern. “You’re not eating. Y’okay?”

 

How the hell was Fenton so goddamned sweet?

 

“No- yes, err. Sorry. Just distracted. It’s kind of weird… and complicated.”

 

Danny grinned that sharp-edged smile that made Dash’s stomach do flips. “My parents are  _ ghost hunters _ ,” he pointed out, never faltering. “I have time: uncomplicate it for me.” He paused, considering Dash with wary eyes. “I imagine it’s got to do with why you’re being so weirdly nice to me?”

 

His cheeks burned. “Yeah,” Dash admitted truthfully. “It does.”

 

The desperate hesitance in his tone must have shone through and flipped a switch in Danny’s stupid little brain, because one long hand was on Dash’s back in an instant. “Is everything ok, dude?” He patted the quarterback in a way that was probably meant to be soothing, but it was more halting and uncomfortable than anything.

 

Points for trying, though.

‘

“I guess,” Dash finally said. He turned to face Danny, meeting his eyes for the first time that afternoon. “Do you hate me?”

 

Danny hesitated, brow knit. “No,” he said, and despite the slight delay in his response, he sounded very sure of himself. “I don’t like you all the time,” he made a little face, “for obvious reasons. But no, I don’t hate you.”

 

“Why?” Slipped out. Dash had meant for that to stay inside.

 

“Why not? You’re kind of a jerk, dude, but you’re not that bad.” At Dash’s dejected silence, he continued. “I just always kind of figured…” Danny trailed off, but then his voice hardened. His hand was suddenly firm on Dash’s shoulder, and the quarterback jerked his head up to meet his gaze. “I know, Dash.”

 

A melancholy smile pulled at his lips, and the weird sad look in Fenton’s high-noon eyes looked disconcerting and out of place. He looked old and tired and impossibly big in that moment, like a soldier.

 

“Know what?” Dash managed to mumble in return.

 

Danny’s gaze softened, and he leaned in. Dash’s stomach did a flip, heart climbing into his throat as the other boy’s long fingers traced his jawline. Those hooded eyes watched him carefully from through those shaggy bangs, just like the dream, and excitement built in his belly.

 

He let his eyes slide shut as Danny’s lips parted, leaning into the contact, waiting for their mouths to meet--

 

They never did.

 

Rough lips pressed tentatively against Dash’s cheek. He could feel thick lashes flutter against his nose as Danny drew away, a pleasant little half-smile on his face.

 

“Sorry,” he said quietly. “I’m really flattered.” His shoulders started to climb against his neck as his face grew pink. “It means a lot to me.” Firm, cool hands slotted themselves with Dash’s nervous sweaty ones. “But I can’t do… that. This.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Danny sighed, looking guilty. “It’s not you,” His eyes lit with that mischievous spark. “It’s me.” he laughed at the overused line, and Dash smiled despite himself. Danny stood, cupping Dash’s face in his hands to plant a soft peck on his forehead. 

 

Turning to leave, he dug into his hoodie pocket and pulled out a crumpled twenty, slapping it lightly onto the counter.

 

“I’ll see you at school, Dash.”

 

“Will do, Danny.”


	15. Teen Slang

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack had great aim, thank you very much. Honestly, sometimes it felt like he was the only one who knew what he was doing.

Jack Fenton by no means fancied himself an idiot. Sure, he was often scatterbrained and inattentive, and sometimes he needed to do calculations over and over before the numbers made sense, but he wasn’t stupid.

 

He had spent his whole life as someone twice exceptional. He knew what it was like to be talked down to, to simmer and seethe under his breath when people took him for a fool.

 

He saw himself in Danny-- very, very smart, but troubled with attention deficit inherited from his father. Danny had always been sharp, just as if not more so than his sister, but the Accident in September of freshman year had seemingly thrown it all out the window.

 

Teachers had started sending letters home-- written assignments were pure nonsense. He couldn’t read aloud in class without stumbling over every word, glaring daggers at the page, spitting harsh syllables with no real meaning. Danny’s grades plummeted.

 

The doctors called it peripheral dyslexias, and a few other things. The electric shock from the Accident had damaged Danny’s brain. He was lucky not to be paralyzed. He was lucky not to be dead. Jack didn’t really care what it was. 

 

Danny, his beautiful bright boy, at fourteen, could barely read or write. 

 

Seeing his son look so lost was crushing to Jack, to see the tears welling in his eyes as he gripped his pencil so hard it splintered. The page in front of him was pure nonsense, and the worst part was that it all made sense to Danny until someone pointed it out. How frustrating it must have been, to have it all out in front of you only to find that no one else can see?

 

Jack knew this. He had had trouble like this himself, albeit not nearly as severe or sudden. He had lived with it all his life, so he was used to it. It must have been so much worse to be normal and then wake up one day being not. Danny mumbled in English, but wrote in something foreign and alien, but eerily consistent. It wasn’t just scrambled letters. 

 

As much as he loved her, Maddie had brushed off his allegations when he suggested as much. He relented without a fight.

 

Danny didn’t actually give voice to those garbled letters until some several months after the accident when a string of guttural, hissing syllables came out over the breakfast table when he’d burnt his mouth on hot coffee. He’d blushed deeply, face heating up and a sheepish smile pushing his cheeks up.

 

“Esperanto,” he’d explained with only marginal embarrassment. “Language of the geeks.”

 

Jazz rolled her eyes and mumbled something about the eighteen-hundreds or the universe or sandwiches, or something. No one listened. Maddie laughed lightly at Danny’s lie, but Jack furrowed his brow, humming under his breath as he thought. He had briefly studied the artificial language while programming the Ghost-Gabber. Those words sounded nothing like Esperanto, not even a nerd-slang adaptation of it. He squinted at Danny, opening his mouth to comment. 

 

“Didn’t sound like Esperanto,” he observed.

 

At that he’d rubbed the back of his neck the way he always did when he was nervous, stimming with the prickle of his own hairline. Danny’s mouth twitched a little, as though he had meant to say something more but thought better of it.

 

“I think we sort of made it our own, with slang and stuff,” Danny said, a little too quickly. “Kids these days, amirite?”

 

He was out the door in a flash, and Jack didn’t bother to bring it up again.

 

* * *

 

Working on the Ghost-Gabber taught Jack many things about linguistics. Context was everything, especially in a tonal language like the ghost-speak. It was not unlike some old Asian languages, where inflection and energy was the difference between “scooch a little so I can reach the pepper” and “duck the hell outta the way before that girder crushes you.”

 

It was all really quite fascinating. Language was the core of culture, and the idea of studying the undiscovered already gave Jack a little thrill of excitement. But an interdimensional endeavor? The culture and social climate of an entirely new plan of existence? It was almost too much. 

 

An encounter with one particularly chatty newborn ghost, a woman who’d been hit by a car, had left Jack with quite a lot to mull over for the evening. He was excited to get to work even as he recalled her. 

 

She had been a mousy woman in life, with greasy brown hair pulled up into a messy bun on the top of her head, thick-rimmed glasses and a blouse tucked into her sleek pencil skirt. A businesswoman, or perhaps a teacher. Her clothes were marred by tire tracks and blood that she didn’t seem to notice. 

 

She had seemed panicked and scared, foreign words bubbling from her spectral mouth in incomprehensible syllables, sounds that no human throat could possibly produce.

 

The Gabber had picked her up just fine, and with string after string of raw translation to pick through, Jack had his work cut out for him.

 

Basic vocabulary was easy enough to decode: the device was designed to filter through existing languages and their variants, especially old or dead tongues. The ghost-speak, however, was a bit more sophisticated than a cobbled-together frankensteining of earthly languages, and proved a little more complicated to interpret in English. 

 

Repetitive sounds, later discovered to be prepositions, were slurred fluidly into longer words and sentences. Each syllable was melodic, but offset by half-voiced impressions of a ‘k’ or hard ‘c’, giving the language a guttural tone.

 

_ Nava _ was among the first words translated, mostly on account of its frequency of use, meaning ‘please [I beseech, beg, plead, request].’ 

 

_ S’sept arret. Nava! Nava! Pryet k’sen? Pryet? _

 

“I [me] [myself] will be late [slow] [delayed]. Please. Please. [Fear me.] Who are you [this one]. Who [which one]. [Fear me.]”

 

Jack had a niggling suspicion that part of the translation was off. He would need to uncross a few wires later to fix that grating little bug, but the integrity of the meaning was sound enough. This woman must have been rushing to get somewhere when she’d crossed the street and got hit by the SUV.

 

A shame, but not something that could be undone. He continued with his work, jotting question words and choppy phrases onto sticky-notes and pinning them to the corkboard above his desk. Linguistics had always been his preference over mathematics, even if he wasn’t always good at either practice.

 

His inner scientist, however, wasn’t quite done. He stared at the pattern of the words, apostrophes cutting between those drawn-out pronouns, the way complex sentences bled into one another until they became only a few long words. The grammar rules behind those linguistic patterns were far beyond his grasp, but something caught his eye about the configuration of words.

 

Something akin to dread pooled in his belly, and Jack went upstairs into the kitchen. There was a basket on the far counter that was full of mail and flyers and the occasional weapon blueprint, waiting to be sifted through at a later date.

 

Jack pulled out Danny’s not-quite-failed English extra credit test. It wasn’t entirely fair to say he had almost failed-- it was a solid ‘C,’ but still enough to get a warning letter home about “lack of effort” and a fierce reprimand from his parents, mostly Maddie.

 

Danny had sat silently through the entire tirade, shameful eyes cast to the ground. He voiced no excuse, only insisting that the gibberish scrawled across the page had made perfect sense to him at the time. That had been among the first assignments received after the Accident that had clued the Fentons into his freshly acquired dyslexia. 

 

Maddie had apologized for days afterwards.

 

Absentmindedly, he wrenched his thoughts away from the memory and took the half-folded test down with him to the Lab. The loose-leaf paper was crumpled and a little grey with pencil smudges, not to mention a little torn about the corners, but overall intact.

 

He allowed his gaze to drift over the big red ‘C’ that was circled in heavy felt-tip pen at the top of the test, then down to the title. It opened decently enough, if lacking maturity, about the majesty of the purple-backed Gorilla.

 

About a quarter of the way down the page was where Jack’s attention was really caught. The shakily penned words in English devolved into a hodgepodge of unrelated letters before suddenly, smoothly, transitioning into what was undoubtedly ghost-speak.

 

After staring at those damnable translations for hours, Jack could recognize those slurred prepositions from a good mile away.

 

It was deeply and utterly frightening. Jack Fenton, the only man in the world, to his knowledge, who had so much as attempted to translate this interdimensional language, lacked the  _ vocabulary _ to decipher what was written.

 

The short little word  _ dru _ popped up several times, and Jack learned it to mean ‘two. [double] [twice]’ There were two of those rare apes left in the world, Jack remembered. Danny’s activist friend Sam had chattered loudly about setting them free for what felt like hours before curfew approached and she needed to head home.

 

Yet another phrase Jack didn’t recognize:

 

_...Cuoda yh fera-gretch… _

 

A toughie. He ran it briefly through the prototype translator and returned with ‘white [grey] [colorless] and red-blue [violet] [mauve] [lavender] [purple]…’ Those gorillas were white, and, naturally, purple-backed. Jack squinted down at the paper and ran another phrase. And another, until he had translated a near-complete essay on the endangered status of purple-back gorillas and a surprisingly poignant, open-ended debate on what should be done to best preserve the species.

 

It was a high-schooler’s homework, nothing more. Nothing was suspicious or diabolical. Danny had insisted that the so-called gibberish had made perfect sense at the time. It  _ did _ make perfect sense. The essay was quite eloquent in some places, although that was more of a wager on Jack’s part-- the clunky translator seemed to have butchered a few idioms.

 

Why would Danny have such a clearly intimate knowledge of ghostly language patterns?

 

Suddenly Jack didn’t feel like translating any more. He went to bed thinking about the dead woman. He wondered what she had been late for, and juggled the evidence of a business meeting versus a parent-teacher conference before ultimately deciding that there wasn’t much difference.

 

* * *

 

Jack and Maddie were hunting the ghost-boy, again. The little ghoul was agile and quick, but not without fault. It weaved between powerlines, wriggling spectral tail flicking out behind it as it glided over the rooftops with the Fentons on its heels.

 

Maddie fired an ectoblast that very nearly missed one of the telephone wires, whizzing off into the clear blue sky.

 

The ghost-boy yelped, bunching its tail and darting off into an alleyway. Jack swerved the ghost assault vehicle to a stop, grimacing as his wife struggled to keep her grip on the roof of the van. She tumbled smoothly to the ground, though, and Jack emerged from the vehicle shortly thereafter.

 

Weapons primed and ready to fire, the pair stormed the narrow alley. Brickwork in shades of dusty clay-brown hemmed in the left side, while cheap beige vinyl cut off the right. A chain-link fence pinned with black tarp stretched tall between the two buildings. The ghost-boy was hovering breathlessly just beside a dumpster, slightly behind it.

 

It looked incredibly young, with a round face still smooth with baby fat, and wide green eyes that were filled with strange, inherent curiosity, spectral chest heaving. The action was likely more out of habit than anything else-- this one looked to be a relatively ‘young’ ghost, chronologically as well as metaphysically. It couldn’t have been more than a year old, tops, if sightings were anything to go on, in fact probably a few months.

 

The evidence proved otherwise, however, in the form of its hugely spiking power levels. This ghost had to have been pooling energy for decades, perhaps a century or more to suddenly appear at such great strength.

 

Point being, the spectre’s apparent youth, and with it innocence, couldn’t be trusted.

 

Maddie didn’t hesitate to bury a shot of plasma in the creature’s shoulder. It yowled, luminous tears peeking at the corners of its eerily intelligent eyes as it gripped the wound with one free hand.

 

Only by sheer luck had it shifted and avoided being shot in the throat.

 

Jack let loose his own shot, this time grazing the ghost’s thigh as it anticipated his attack and shot upwards. At that it let loose a string of unintelligible curses in what was undeniably ghost-speak, and the Ghost-Gabber device at Jack’s belt pinged with the fresh translation.

 

The ghost-boy disappeared above the cloudline, dripping caustic ectoplasm that sizzled onto the concrete below.

 

Maddie cursed their bad luck, but Jack wasn’t listening, transfixed on the rough translation on the portable screen in his hands.

 

“What?” His wife asked, voice softening in concern as she holstered her gun. “Is everything okay?”

 

Nodding numbly, he kept on staring. The words were unrecognizable in writing, so he hadn’t seen them on paper before, but those strange, lilting syllables were uncannily familiar. It was a curse, of course, given the context, but the translation shed an interesting light on its precise meaning.

 

_ K’sen dwarco! K’alfren qcektra! _

 

‘I’m an idiot [cunt] [pussy] [motherfucker] [more translations available…]! I hate [despise] [loathe] [resent] this!”

 

Foul language aside, Jack  _ recognized _ those words. For all the drive back to Fentonworks, he wracked his brain on where he’d first heard them, but kept coming up with blanks. Frustrated, he set the translation down for the night.

 

* * *

 

The next morning Danny was chugging cold coffee like his life depended on it. There were distinct purple shadows tattooed beneath his eyes, and Jack winced in sympathy.

 

“Rough night, space cadet?”

 

Danny cracked a lopsided smile. “You have no idea,” he laughed, but it was unusually strained.

 

Jazz pulled her freckled nose out of the book in front of her to contribute. “You need to go to bed earlier,” she scolded maternally, nodding down at the crisp white pages as though they held some great truth. “Sleep is good for the psyche!”

 

The younger teen rolled his blue eyes and poured himself more coffee. At the worst possible moment, his hand seemed to spasm, and the mug slipped from his fingers. Scalding coffee sprayed the immediate radius as the cup cracked against the kitchen tile.

 

Amid the chaos, Jack heard Danny swear in a voice like acid: “ _ Dwarco! _ ”

 

He froze as his son shook hot droplets from his fingers and kneeled to pick up the shattered mug. He said nothing as the boy deposited the broken pieces in the garbage and began to wipe up the spill.

 

Danny noticed. His inquisitive blue eyes flitted over his father, brows knit in concern and mouth slightly parted. “Sorry?” He offered hesitantly. “It’s just coffee. I’ll clean it, dad.”

 

In the light those eyes seemed to flash teal-green.

 

“Of course,” Jack boomed reassuringly. He could hear the plastic in his own voice, but soldiered on. “I’m just tired! Spent all night tryina translate some weird thing that ghost-kid said.”

 

The boy’s dark brows furrowed, and for a moment Jack could see the uncomprehending expression on the little ghoul’s face flicker over that of his son. He understood now, dread coiling in his chest and wrapping around his lungs.

 

“No wonder you’re grieving the coffee,” Danny quipped, and Jack relaxed a little.

 

He bent down to take the rag from his son. “Don’t worry there, Danny-boy. Hurry before you’re late to school!”

 

The teen’s pale eyes bugged out almost comically as he glanced at the clock. “Dw---shit-uhm-taki ‘shrooms!” He cursed, and Jack laughed good-naturedly as his son scrambled to his feet and slung his bag hurriedly over his shoulder.

 

“Watch your language,” he chastised playfully. “In English or otherwise.” Danny froze for a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it instant, face a mask. “Esperanto,” Jack clarified. It was only half a truth, but it did the trick, and Danny relaxed.

 

“I will,” he promised, grinning. “Thanks dad!”

 

And then he was out the door and sprinting down the street, backpack straps flapping behind him as he ran.

 

Jack wasn’t an idiot, he knew that. Kneeling in a puddle of ceramic shards and cooling coffee didn’t change that, but he was left wondering just how stupid he had to be to let something like this happen to his own son. He had to have been dead… but he breathed, ate, drank, and slept. It was like something out of an old comic book: boy gets in lab accident, gains radioactive superpowers.

 

A little flower of pride bloomed in Jack’s chest at that thought. Danny was a good kid. The ghost-boy hadn’t even been aggressive. He couldn’t wait to tell Maddie!

 

But something stopped him. Maybe it was the promise for vengeance, or that clinical-cold efficiency that Maddie adopted in the field. Jack loved her for her spontaneity, a trait most associated with him rather than her, and it had proven time and again to be an invaluable skill.

 

However… her shoot first, ask questions later mentality was dangerous. She was a doting mother and a loving wife first and foremost, and beautifully streamlined ghost-hunted, and a brilliant scientist, but something in Jack questioned quite where the line was drawn. 

 

It was that deep-seated scientist in her that worried him. There was no way of knowing exactly what had happened to Danny without asking him outright, but Jack wasn’t sure if that was a safe route to take.

 

He would wait until Danny was ready to come clean on his own, assuming that he actually  _ had _ something to come clean about at all. Jack was hesitant to trust his own conclusions after his constant, bumbling mistakes.

 

Mishaps, huh? He wouldn’t tell anyone else he knew, Jack decided, but in the meantime he thought he might be able to make things a little easier on his teen son. Jack Fenton was twice-exceptional, very bright, but absentminded. No one would think to assign blame on uncharged weaponry or comically bum shots, not on someone with a reputation like Jack.

 

Jack Fenton by no means fancied himself an idiot. Thankfully, everyone else carelessly did. Sweet, sweet irony. 

 

He needed to slip some hints about that so-called ‘witty banter,’ though. Danny was many things, but a brilliant dialogue writer was unfortunately not one of them. Like father, like son, he supposed. ‘Suffering spooks,’ and all that.


	16. False Alarm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Manuel only wanted to climb higher than Tomás.

Blue and red lights spun over the night-blue foliage, ricocheting off of cars and nacreous yellow vests. Danny stood numbly off to the side, hands shoved deep into his sweatshirt pockets as he tried to swallow past the lump in his throat.

 

The girl who had apparently been babysitting was in tears. Clumps of stringy blonde hair clung with sweat to her face, and the distraught flush nearly blotted out her freckles. The lost boy’s parents seemed equally distressed, tittering animatedly with police officers. The sheen on their cheeks glistened in the muted dark.

 

His hero-complex was going to eat him from the inside out if Danny didn’t do something, so he approached the scene. He cleared his throat softly, tapping the boy’s mother on the shoulder.

 

“‘Scuse me, Missus Cesaire. What’s his name?” The teen asked gently. He was becoming uncannily accustomed to soothing people in crises.

 

The woman craned her neck a little, peering up at him with watery brown eyes. “Who’re you?” She asked pitifully, choking on a clogged nose on top of her accent.

 

Danny didn't dare try to smile, fearing that it'd come out as a grimace. “My name’s Danny,” he told her lowly, schooling his face into a neutral mask of sympathy. “Can I ask your son's name?”

 

“Manuel,” she said without hesitation, voice breaking.

 

Nodding, Danny poked at the cold core in his chest. It throbbed in syncopation with his sluggish heart, then pushed power up into his throat.

 

The teenage babysitter was distraught, clutching a stuffed giraffe to her chest. Danny gave Manuel’s mother a firm pat on the back before turning to the girl.

 

“Is that his?” He asked softly.

 

She nodded mutely, holding the toy out for him to see. He took it gingerly, reaching out with a wobbly tendril of his Ghost Sense.

 

Ah, there it was. Emotionally charged, well-loved.

 

With that information in tow, Danny passed the ruffled little giraffe back to her. “Don't worry,” he soothed. “He’ll be fine.”

 

Across the open lot he stalked, shouldering past vested police officers to peer into the woods. The backyard, positioned to the north side of the home, was small. A pretty roan fence hemmed the yard in, flanked by rows of neat hedges.

 

There was a sickly-looking apple tree off near the far end of the yard, with unripe green fruits dangling from some higher branches. It was too thin to climb, and lacked handholds. Crossing that option off his mental list, Danny tipped his head to one of the officers, who eyed him with unease.

 

“Do you know if the fence goes on behind the bushes?” He asked her.

 

Intrigue sparked in the middle-aged policewoman’s soft grey eyes. “No,” she said. “We think the kid got off into the woods.” She frowned, shooting a glance at the distraught babysitter who was mumbling ashamedly to the boy’s parents, who seemed to take pity on the girl as she spluttered and cried. “ _How_ he got out of the house is another story, though.”

 

Danny narrowed his eyes, and the officer jumped to attention. He shook his head to clear his vision, retracting his ghostly aura until it was tucked firmly opposite his heart. He couldn’t afford to scare her.

 

“It was just an accident,” he defended sourly, then turned to look into the dark forest ahead. The sky above was dusky grey-blue, casting deep shadows through the trees. Mapping the area in his brain, Danny considered his searching grounds. The woods weren’t very thick or full of wildlife, so neither flora nor fauna would likely be an issue. He knew that the stretch of city-scraggly trees was long and narrow, and curled around the back lot of Casper High not far away.

 

He could handle that. The policewoman spluttered a little, indignant as he elbowed gently past her. “Where do you think you’re going?” She challenged flusteredly, and Danny could taste her rolling apprehension in the cool evening air.

 

“I’m going to see if I can find Manuel,” he explained with great restraint, still unable to keep the acerbic bite from his voice.

 

She seemed taken aback for only a moment before collecting herself. “Excuse me? You’re just a civilian.”

 

Danny curled his lip, baring blunt teeth in a shadowy imitation of his usual gnarring. “Sorry, officer.” He wished humans were as pliable as ghosts were when it came to snapping jaws and unspoken threats. At least ghosts had the decency to cower a little at his direction, even for ineffectively flat teeth.

 

Not flat enough, evidently, and the spinning police lights flashed over his mouth and his eyes, carving intimidating shadows deep into his face. The policewoman stumbled back a little, eyes narrowed.

 

“What’s _wrong_ with you?”

 

Suppressing a groan, Danny tossed his head. “Rude,” he observed with mock nonchalance. He twitched a little, disappointed in himself for allowing his ghostly coercion to peek through his human disguise. Again.

 

“Sorry,” he said, a little stiffly, albeit not untruthfully. “I would like to cut through the woods on my way home. I won’t impede your investigation, I’m sure. I’ll even keep an eye out for the kid on my way, and I’ll let you know if I see anything. Swear on my life.”

 

He could barely withhold the sniggering laugh that shook his chest at that one.

 

The policewoman looked appropriately contrite at that, shoulders sagging. “Sorry,” she returned genuinely, sighing. “I’m just a little high-strung right now, y’know?”

 

Danny nodded sagely. “I know. Kid’ll turn up just fine,” he assured. When the woman wilted further, he placed a firm hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, ma’am. You’re just doing your job.”

 

She nodded. With a half-hearted smile meant to reassure, Danny pivoted to face the treeline once more. He loped over the yard, slipping his skinny frame easily between the end of the fence and the hedges. He cast one more glance behind him and gave a shy little wave. The woman’s face was cast into sharp relief by the spinning siren lights, but he could see her wry smile clearly enough.

 

It was dark in the woods. The sky was already dusky above, and as Danny moved quietly over the dry fallen leaves the lights receded behind him. Thankfully, being less than human did have its perks: Danny’s enhanced vision made watery moonlight filter through the trees like broad day. His sensitivity to motion tracked small night animals moving in his periphery-- a moth, a bird, a rodent, all fleeing as he noiselessly approached.

 

Without humans to witness, Danny pulled his ghost sense back up into his throat, letting cool blue vapor curl from his lips and tickle his nose. Manuel was surprisingly far-off, if the halfa was tracking him right. He had left a trail of human fear through the undergrowth, and Danny’s stomach twisted.

 

He followed the trail with some minor confidence, flicking his tongue out between his lips as he walked. The background aurae of other humans had diluted the scent somewhat, but as he drew away from the scene the little boy’s trail grew stronger.

 

Danny’s tracking lead him to a small, gravelly clearing in the woods. The glen was ringed by twisting, gnarled trees with many branches-- ideal for climbing-- and dense foliage. He could smell wild berries on the air, and his sensitive hearing caught the soft gurgling of running water someplace nearby.

 

It also picked up on a heartbeat. Not the high rabbit’s-pace of rodents and birds, nor the tinny rush of an insect’s open circulation. Danny couldn’t allow himself to go that far without seriously hurting himself. Enhanced hearing didn’t necessarily equal enhanced _selective_ hearing.

 

That was a child’s heartbeat rushing over the sighing trees. Too fast and small to be grown, but much too slow to be anything smaller than a toddler. It was definitely a medium-sized mammal, at the least. Humans had a unique tenor to the soft _whump-whump_ of rushing blood, but it took practice to identify each person’s personal sound.

 

Ears pricked, he tasted the air again, gaze sliding over the glen. He smelled the kid, faint spice and tear-free shampoo, heard his frightened breaths, but couldn’t see him.

 

* * *

 

Manny shook against the tree branch, lips pressed into a thin line as he suppressed a whimper. There, just below him, were two big, green eyes that flashed in the moonlight like a cat’s under a streetlamp, filmy and glowing.

 

It was a monster, long-limbed and indistinct in the dark, but Manny saw those awful glowing eyes and knew that he was done for.

 

There was a whimper building in his throat. He was going to die and he hadn’t even climbed higher than Tomás in this stupid tree. He wouldn’t even go out with explosions or aliens or anything cool, just a terrified nine-year-old, clinging arm and leg to the round bough of one of those limby trees.

 

The monster hummed lowly, an eerily human sound, and turned its lambent gaze up to Manny. His heart did a little flip: he’d been spotted. “Don’t eat me!” The child cried, trembling against the rough bark.

 

Another rough sound came from the monster, and it paced in front of the tree. It seemed to make up its mind about something, padding up to the trunk. It threw one long leg up over a low branch, reaching up and beginning to scale the gnarled oak. Manuel was absolutely petrified.

 

“Don’t eat me!” He begged again, eyes shut tight and face pressed close against the branch as he turned away.

 

“Huh?” The monster said eloquently. Manny couldn’t see its face beyond the flickering eyes, but it stopped mid-climb. “What are you on about?”

 

“Oh!” He squinted down from his perch. Relief bloomed in his chest as he peered into the dark. The man’s features were smudged in the indistinct shadows, but Manny could see the gloss of his hair and the matte of his jacket in the moonlight, and the flashing of something around his wrist as he moved his slender arm. “You’re a person. I thought you were a monster at first. It’s dark.”

 

The man spoke in a low, ragged-smooth voice that reminded Manny of his uncle Jorge, who lived in California. “What do you mean, bud?”

 

He watched the stranger’s face wearily, wiping snot and tears from his brown face. “I thought I saw scary eyes, like monsters under beds,” he explained. “My friend Tomás says they’ll come out while you sleep and eat you.”

 

Strangely, the man “oh”’d softly, then smiled up at Manuel. “I’m not gonna hurt you. You’re Manuel, right?”

 

“Manny,” he corrected on reflex. The boy blinked owlishly before remembering his prior fear. He pressed himself close to the branch, looking green.

 

He could feel the stranger squinting up at him, radiating concern. “Are you stuck, kid?”

 

“N-no!”

 

The man laughed lightly at that, scaling the trunk with ease. He crouched with feline balance close to the base of the limb, one arm outstretched. “I’m too heavy to go out there,” he explained. “Can you shimmy over this way?”

 

Manny trembled, eyes wide. He shook his head furiously, clinging to the rough bark so hard he thought the branch might break.

 

“How’d you even _get_ up here?” The man grumbled with half-hearted irritation, contradicting himself to edge out onto the bough. Manuel jumped a little at his cool touch, but did not resist as the older boy scooped him up and slid one-handed and awkwardly down the trunk.

 

“Thanks,” he said shakily, clinging to the stranger’s loose jacket sleeve as his feet touched the welcome ground. “I was just going to play,” he confessed, dangerously close to a whine. “I wanted to climb highest in the tree… I got… stuck.”

 

The stranger arched an eyebrow, crouching down to meet Manny’s puffy brown eyes. “Why were you out here so late, buddy? You shouldn’t be out alone at night, y’know.”

 

It was dark, so maybe he didn’t see Manny’s cheeks darken. “Melissa wouldn’t’ve let me even _try_ ,” he justified with a pout. “She would say it was too dangerous.”

 

“I don’t disagree,” snorted the man, crossing his arms. “Your mum’s worried sick. You’ve been gone for hours, dude. Police are out’n everything.”

 

Manny blanched. “Police!” He cried, eyes wide. “I don’t wanna go to jail!”

 

The older boy shook his head with a little half-smile. “You won’t,” he assured. “They just want you to be safe.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Really, bud.”

 

* * *

 

Having the scent in his throat, that little hunter-thrill in his chest that didn’t want to be stomped out, had let him call on some trancelike daze that had him through the long woods in what felt like moments. Without it, Danny remembered how far out into the woods they were.

 

Plus, Manuel seemed a little too keen on reminding him.

 

“I’m tired, Mister.” The little boy truly was. His chubby cheeks were scratched by the tree and shiny with sap, while leaves clung to his curly hair and dirty clothing.

 

“I can tell,” Danny countered playfully, pivoting in place to face Manuel. “C’mere.”

 

He knelt, bending over and gesturing for the boy to come over. “Climb up on my shoulders,” he commanded, and Manny obeyed. His sneakers were caked with cold mud that dampened the older man’s clothes, but it took only two assisted steps for those legs to be wrapped carefully round Danny’s neck.

 

Danny clasped his cool fingers very gently around the child’s ankles, shifting him to a more comfortable position. He could feel his passenger’s sweaty fingers curling into his hair, toying with the longer pieces. A vaguely familiar pull took Danny’s attention, but he recognized the rhythm almost immediately.

 

So he padded, a little heavily, through the woods. Manuel braided his hair idly, humming softly, and slowly his motions lost vigor. They walked, and Danny could faintly sense the police officers just beyond the ragged foliage. The child’s breathing slowed a little, grew more even. He slumped against the back of Danny’s head.

 

The teen smiled a little at that, and secured the kid with just one hand to brush a stray clump of leaves out of the way.

 

* * *

 

Melissa was, for sure, at the most miserable she’d ever been in her short life. This took the cake, all of it. Not even when Sanchez had stood her up at the junior-senior dance, or when Lester had caught video of her prior confession and subsequent breakdown in exchange for a get-out-of-swirlies-free-card from Paulina’s personal attack jock.

 

Who _lost a kid_? Melissa did, apparently. Maybe they were right-- she’d make a terrible mother. Manny had been in bed, she was sure. She’d tucked him in and everything, he’d closed his eyes, and everything had been absolutely fine only a few hours before. His sister, Lucille, was fast asleep upstairs, too.

 

Everything was fine. The Cesaire parents would have been home by ten o’clock and then she could collect and go home.

 

The kids were both sleeping, anyway. It was late: she’d allowed them a little more time before bed than they usually got from their parents, with the promise that they’d go right to bed when the time came. She had only sat down on the sofa to rest after wrangling two young kids all Saturday night.

 

Just her luck that resting her eyes had turned into dead slumber. Mr. and Mrs. Cesaire were already home by the time she woke. Mrs. Cesaire had gone up to kiss the kids good-night before turning in herself, while her husband paid Melissa for watching the little ones.

 

No sooner had she taken the money did Mrs. Cesaire shout from the upstairs that Manny wasn’t there.

 

She felt _awful_ . He had been there, in bed, tucked up with his giraffe beneath a safari-themed comforter. Manny had _been there_ , been _fine_. She closed her eyes and the kid was out the back door like it wasn’t any trouble. How could she not have heard?

 

The police sirens had howled at first, but Melissa didn’t hear them. Their flashing lights struck her with sharp glare that stung her eyes against the dark, but she didn’t see. She just berated herself, an endless stream of internal abuse, and stared listlessly into the backyard.

 

Momma Cesaire had been undeservedly forgiving, consoling Melissa as she confessed that she had _seen him_ , that he had been fast asleep. Her husband had been equally understanding, patting her on the back with his strong brown hands.

 

So Melissa scrubbed hopelessly at her tear-stained cheeks, clutching a floppy little plush giraffe that belonged to Manny. His name was Larry, and he was the kid’s favorite toy in the world.

 

The police officers asked her questions as she wept.

 

“When did you last see him?” One male officer asked. His dark green eyes were sympathetic as he watched her. Melissa relayed her answer without thought, going through the motions. She did it again, again, stupid, inconsequential pieces of information spilling from her anguished lips. It was an accident, really.

 

She could feel them all looking, judging her from the safety of their innocence. They said that it was an honest mistake, that anyone could have made it, but she knew better. She was irresponsible and inattentive. What a stupid mistake.

 

So Melissa kept her gaze fixed on the darkened bushes ahead of her. The lights flashed over waxy leaves and leapt across deep furrows in the tree bark where birds had pecked their fill. In the murky dimness, something moved.

 

A hush seemed to fall over the scene, even the frantic parents and placating officers going dead silent. There, in the dark, catching the light of the police cars, were two luminous eyes.

 

They were big and virescent. Not muted reflection-green of a wild cat, or fickle yellow-green of an owl. Amity Park was a town of ghosts. Even children could identify those from eyes alone. Melissa sure did.

 

These eyes outright glowed, unblinking pools of lambent green. There was nothing there, no pupil, no iris, just empty color. Like acid, they gleamed, shimmering in and out of sight, sharp and eerily intelligent.

 

Everyone froze. A twig snapped loudly underfoot. The bushes shook and those eyes bobbed up and down in the dark, winking in and out of visibility. One indistinct hand reached out to part the foliage, long-fingered and pale.

 

The tension snapped like a guitar string when that weird, willowy teenager, Danny, poked his head out from the woods. He tipped his head curiously, stepping carefully over a knot of viny plants. There was something on his back, unmoving.

 

His eyes still flashed in the light of the police cars, but remained frustratingly innocuous. The teen seemed worried, shifting uneasily. Near everyone’s gaze was fixed on him, and he adjusted the load on his back, bouncing on his toes.

 

“Wake up,” he commanded softly, and the lump on his shoulders moved.

 

Relief flooded Melissa, and she watched it spill over the Cesaire's faces as they realized it was Manny riding piggyback. Danny’s shaggy hair was freshly braided, sloppily and twined with leaves-- undoubtedly Manuel’s work. He smiled down at the little boy as he lowered him to the ground, pushing him gently towards his parents.

 

Manny looked less than appropriately contrite, but it was an expression that was so undoubtedly _him_ that all worry fled from Melissa’s thoughts. “Hi Mama,” he greeted childishly, arms tucked behind his back. “Sorry for going out. I climbed a tree!”

 

Mrs. Cesaire laughed lightly with relief. She knelt down to be on eye-level with her son. “I’m glad you’re ok, Manuel.” The boy’s little face flushed dark as she continued. “But you shouldn’t be apologizing to me. Melissa has been very upset.”

 

“Really?” He asked, seeming genuinely surprised. His gaze darted guiltily to Melissa as she held tight to Larry and wiped at her tear-stained face. “I was only out for a little while,” he defended meekly.

 

To his credit, Manny turned to his babysitter without further prompting, lowering his head in apology. “I’m sorry Miss Melissa.” He stared very intently down at his shoes. “I didn’t mean to make you sad.”

 

Melissa smiled, sighing in relief as she scooped the boy up in her slim teenage arms. She ruffled his hair with a little more vengeance than was strictly necessary. “You’re forgiven,” she allowed playfully, transferring the plush giraffe to Manuel’s arms and hugging the boy tight.

 

She stopped paying attention after handing him off to his parents, half-sick with relief that he was safe and sound. Even then, a little chill crept up her spine. She had seen Danny around town before, usually loitering at the Nasty Burger or jogging around the park.

 

He was… an enigma, of sorts, with ghost-hunting parents and a clear disdain for the paranormal. But Danny was Danny and Danny was weird. It was the sort of thing that the teens of Amity Park had simply learned not to question-- the town was a supernatural hotbed. Yeah, they were a small town and sometimes desperate for domestic news, but one quirky high-schooler of many didn’t warrant much attention against ghost attacks and the impending end-times.

 

But that night, seeing him there, Melissa knew in her deepest core that something was very, very wrong about Fenton. His movements were too fluid. When he was still he was _so_ very still, like the dead. His eyes were sharp but lacking that little wet shine that made people look alive and healthy. Something about the air around him was heavy and cloying, like standing beside a cadavre.

 

Like the dead.

 

His eyes flashed that nacreous green as he grinned sharply down at Manny. It was too late for Melissa to realize she’d been staring when his glassy eyes met her gaze and he winked at her.

 

“I told you he’d come back alright,” he hummed conspiratorially, drawing up beside her with his hands stuffed smugly into his pockets.

 

A wave of cold played hopscotch down her spine, and she averted her gaze, but she couldn't help but smile. They were in good hands.


	17. Momma's Boy Part I: Danny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Special: I blame Patchykins  
> Vlad's picked the wrong day for kidnapping: Danny suffers the consequences.  
> CW: graphic violence/gore, cannibalism

"Your son's been keeping a secret from you, sweet Maddie.”

 

Danny wants to gag, but he doesn’t. He’s too busy focusing on how Hungry he is. It aches in his belly and plays hopscotch down his spine, standing with leaden boots on his chest and driving him  _ insane _ . It’s utterly intolerable, an itch he can’t scratch that sends seizing tremors over his entire body, makes colored stars dance in his vision. All he can focus on is keeping calm.

 

He vaguely registers Vlad’s continuing soliloquy, ““You’ll eat your words soon enough. About that secret, though... “ He grins wickedly, at Maddie and Danny has the presence of mind to make a face, but little more. “I’m sure you’re just dying to sink your teeth into it, hmm?” Plasmius laughs, spinning in midair.  “I know Daniel is, though perhaps he’s bitten off more than he can chew.”

 

That one’s groan-worthy, though, and Danny vocalizes as much. Concentration? Broken. Worth it. He closes his eyes and tunes out the rest of Vlad’s shitty flirting, focusing on the burning fever in his chest. It gnaws at the back of his head, trickling down his throat like icewater. Nothing else hurts like it hurts to be Hungry. Why hadn’t he dosed up when he had the chance?

 

Because he’s an idiot, and an extremely unlucky one at that.

 

Danny watches with unfocused eyes as his mom spits at Vlad. It falls short, but he applauds her for trying. Her glare can turn diamonds runny and soft, and despite his best efforts it seems to have an effect on Vlad.

 

He’s furious, of course.

 

The elder halfa snarls, baring his stupid knockoff Dracula fangs, and tries to kiss Maddie. She’s tied to a vertical metal table, as is her son, held in an underground lab against their collective will. It’s not very romantic.

 

So it’s not terribly unexpected when Maddie gathers her strength and bites Vlad’s lip with all her might. It’s very satisfying to watch, even half conscious, as the idiot billionaire yelps and nurses his split lip, cursing.

 

A little trickle of green ectoplasm seeps from the cut, and Danny’s sluggish heart rate must spike a solid fifty beats-per-minute. He can’t take his eyes off of it, but the lids are getting heavy. He feels saliva, the thick, slimy, ectoplasm-y kind that he only makes when he’s Hungry, gathering at the corners of his mouth, but he hasn’t the presence of mind to swallow.

 

That is ectoplasm, ghost-blood and that is Food. He knows, through the haze, that Food will make the Hunger go away. It’s only common sense. But how to get it? Eating, of course. Eating.

 

The straps that hold him down felt very strong before, but now he is far too Hungry to let them stop him. All it takes is a little ghost channeled into his current human form, and the bindings break easily beneath his strength.

 

The Food is making noises at the human-Mom. He doesn’t care about her right now. She is not Food, nor does she have any, and is therefore useless to him. But she is not in the way of his eating-plans, so he does not need to hurt her. He will if she tries to stop him, but he would rather avoid that. This human-Mom sometimes makes him food, or brings it home from food-places. It is not Food-food, but it is tasty and he likes to eat it. 

 

He has no time for creeping, so he bunches his legs beneath him and leaps at the Food. They collide midair and Danny pins his Food beneath him, slavering. The human-Mom makes surprised noises at him, but he does not care. Can’t she see that he’s busy?

 

Danny looks down at the Food-- it seems very worried, and makes afraid whimpers at him. He snorts. It  _ should _ be worried: it is Food, and he is Hungry.

 

So he eats.

 

The Food is still moving beneath him when he sinks his teeth in, but that does not matter. Sweet-cold ectoplasm rushes into his mouth, and he eagerly swallows. The cool ghost-blood soothes some of the burning ache in his belly, but he needs more. Danny opens up a deep hole in the Food with his teeth, then sticks his clever hands inside. His fingers close on strips of soft-cool-wet Food that smells very, very good and must taste even better. He pulls it out, and his Food makes more upset sounds as he shoves it into his mouth.

 

Upset sounds are annoying, so Danny bares his teeth and growls at the stupid thing. It wilts beneath him, and only makes very small unhappy noises when he reaches inside for more.

 

Slowly, but surely, Danny stops being Hungry and starts to feel pleasantly Full. He notices the human-Mom making many loud, messy upset sounds just nearby, now that the unmoving Food is a less pressing issue. She is not in the way of his eating, though, so he does not care.

 

Wait.

 

What?

 

Reality comes crashing down like a tidal wave. Danny’s vision clears and he can see Vlad beneath him, in human form, steel-blue eyes wide and horrified, breathing shallow. A gaping chunk has been torn from the junction between neck and shoulder: his suit is torn and covered in ectoplasm. And in blood.

 

And it makes his mouth water.

 

Danny screams wordlessly, flinging himself back and landing on his rump. He slips and nearly goes end-over-end because the floor and his hands and his clothes and _everything_ is so slick with red and green and muddy brown mixing.

 

The young halfa arches his back, pivots to the side, and retches. All that comes out is slimy green-tinted bile, nothing more. His ghost half has already metabolized what he’s eaten.

 

His wavering gaze finds his mother, still tied down, staring in horror. The haunted look on her face is like a knife to the chest, but it’s one Danny knows he deserves. He opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out save a strangled, animal whimper.

 

She flinches at the sound, and it breaks his heart.

 

Sobs hitch in Danny’s throat. His eyelashes are stuck together with ectoplasm-- lord knows how it got there-- so his sight is compromised anyway, but he all but goes blind when his vision blurs with tears. He hugs his knees, rocking back and forth on the ground, screaming, tearing at his hair gone stiff and matted with blood of both human and ghost.

 

The noises he makes are less than human and he knows it. They’re not so much sobs as howls, liquid cries of interspersed shrieking and ghost-speak because there are no words in English or Esperanto to describe what he feels.

 

Ghost-speak has a word for this. For the Hunger, the Rampage, and the subsequent Guilt. He has never had to use it before, not in reference to himself. Danny screams the impossible syllables until they’ve lost all civil meaning and are just grief-sounds with no real translation.

 

“Danny?” His mom finally whispers. Her voice breaks on the second syllable and the fear in her tone and in the air around her suffocates him, robs him of breath and of voice. So he just nods feebly, uncurling himself to crawl on hands and knees towards her.

 

She is shaking. Whether from fear or from effort, for resisting the urge to flinch, he does not know or care. “How? When?” She is horrified. So is he.

 

“Mom,” he rasps. His voice is hoarse and barely above a whisper, but it is his own. He is in control. “Mom. Mom. Mom.” He repeats the word, her de facto name, like a prayer. Mom always makes things better. She always has. She won’t this time. Danny starts to cry anew at that thought.

 

He had really wanted to tell her and Dad, eventually. When he would be ready and cleaned up and his parents would be adequately eased into it and Jazz would have his back. His mother, who hates ghosts, has just seen him for what he is. She has seen him at his worst, and most honest, state of being.

 

Danny’s life is  _ over _ . Even if she accepts him his mother will never be able to look at him the same way ever again. She will always flinch when he moves too fast and she will always cower when he raises his voice no matter how much both of them wish she wouldn’t. Everything is ruined. Danny wants to die for real.

 

His mom is crying. Under her breath he hears her beg to the God she doesn’t believe in that this is all a bad dream, that she wants to go home. She wants to go home, and so does Danny.

 

He crawls tentatively through the mess of gore he’s made, not caring as it stains the knees of his jeans or the sleeves of his hoodie. He stops in front of his mom, who is breathing hard as he moves shakily to his feet. Danny’s legs feel like jello. They wobble beneath him as he reaches for the straps pinning his mother to the table, and he stumbles, clutching her arm for balance. She tenses beneath his hand, and he draws hastily away. 

 

She seems surprised when he breaks the straps and retreats a few steps back. He is surprised when she calls his name. “Danny, sweetie.” It is in that tender mom-voice that is usually reserved for very Bad Days that he used to have when he got tired of smiling and wished he was dead. He had stopped wishing that after the Accident.

 

He cocks his head at her, wilting under her gaze. “Mom?”

 

“Come here,” she says, and steps towards him. He shakes in place, nodding, then launches himself at his mother. He buries his face into her chest and breathes in her scent, the faint sciencey ozone smell layered with chocolate and perfume. Her warm arms are around him, hands stroking his hair and rubbing his back. Danny can feel her shaking against him, but she does not flinch or run away.

 

This is more than he could have ever hoped for. She has seen and she still  _ loves _ him. This is amazing. He sobs quietly into her shoulder, garbled words of apology and of gratitude spilling from his bloodied lips, muffled by her clothes but still clear in his adoring tone.

 

He doesn’t hear the whir of a charging ecto-weapon until it’s too late. A lipstick blaster, the kind his mom always carries, is pressed into his hair on the side of his head, where it is matted with blood.

 

“Now tell me what you’ve done with my Danny.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may continue this if ya'll ask nicely. ; )


	18. Momma's Boy Part II: Maddie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maddie learns the truth about her son, and takes it poorly in her denial.  
> CW: violence/gore

Maddie has the blaster pressed against her baby’s head. The glossy dark hair is buzzed very short here, the way her son likes it, but that does not stop it from being matted with the blood of her friend. She bites back a sob at the sight of caked-on gore clinging to Danny’s scalp, gumming up his long, shaggy bangs.

 

“Now tell me what you’ve done with my Danny,” she demands. She is trying her very best to sound authoritative, but her voice betrays her. It comes out as a wavering plea. Maddie can feel the thing that is maybe-Danny stiffen beneath her grip. Its borrowed face falls, pale eyes wide, bloodied mouth gaping.

 

“Mom,” it begs in Danny’s nasal tenor, “I can explain, honest-” it is trembling violently, mouth working helplessly as it-he struggles for words. “I wanted- I never wanted this!”

 

She sets her jaw. “Please don’t lie to me.”

 

And then the _thing_ that is not at all Danny goes intangible, like a ghost, and passes right through her. Maddie gasps, breath catching in her throat as the ice-water sensation of its touch cuts through her core. It stumbles back in that stolen body of her son, high-noon eyes suddenly blazing with unearthly energy.

 

On instinct, she lunges, arms outstretched, but it phases down through the floor and disappears.

 

Maddie stares for what feels like a long time, feeling the cold spot that lingers in her gut throb in time with her gasping breaths. She cries ugly, heaving sobs. That monster has taken her baby away. Her weeping only falters when she hears a low groan from across the room.

 

Oh, God-- _Vlad_. He is trembling, shaking uncontrollably, hot red blood and bile bubbling up in his mouth. His steely grey eyes are glassy and unfocused with pain as he splutters and gasps. He’s going into shock, she realizes. Acting fast, Maddie skids to her knees aside her old college friend. In any other circumstance she would be loath to touch him so freely, but he hasn’t the presence of mind to pine after her now.

 

She quickly pulls his prone form onto its side, tipping his head so that he won’t inhale his own red-streaked vomit. There is nothing to prop up his legs with so she just holds them on her knees, hoping to push some far-off blood back to his heart. Despite her efforts, his skin is grey and clammy to the touch, slick with cool sweat and gooseflesh.

 

The huge, gaping hole in his neck is still gushing. Maddie can see where teeth shredded skin, where it hangs from glistening strips of exposed muscle in ragged chunks. She can see gnawed tendons barely holding it all together, turned thick by congealing blood.

 

Maddie can only watch as Vlad’s labored breaths become more and more irregular, sightless eyes darting wildly around. She soothes him as best she can, in a low, trembling voice. She doesn’t have a phone-- nothing to communicate with.

 

Maybe Vlad does. It pains her to drop his legs, but if she stays still there will be no chance. Her shaking hands probe his pockets, desperate for anything that might be of use in contacting an ambulance.

 

She pulls away empty-handed.

 

The lab is silent save Vlad’s choking breaths and Maddie’s own stifled sobs. She freezes when the scruffy black head of Danny’s body phases up through the floor in front of them, little freckled nose just barely peeking up over the tile. His eyes are normal, china blue and glistening with tears, but she can see faint green lights dancing rings round his irises.

 

Vlad, barely conscious, twitches and shies away as Maddie’s possessed son rises the rest of the way up through the floor. He alights without sound, padding hesitantly over the paneled floor. His ratty red sneakers are dark and muddied with blood: he leaves thin crimson footprints on the white metal as he stalks predatorily closer.

 

This is not the Danny she knows. His ice-blue eyes are unreadable and hard, face schooled into disparaging neutrality. The possessed boy tips his head in that eerie way that animals do, eyes darting between Vlad’s still-weeping wounds and the lipstick blaster resting on Maddie’s thigh.

 

“Mo-Maddie,” says the boy. That breathy-light voice is so painfully _Danny_ , strained and afraid and crackling pitifully in his throat. “I… Please let me help.”

 

Maddie shifts away. Her gloved fingers are slick with Vlad’s blood and the Wisconsin Ghost’s ectoplasm-- they mix into something caustic and pungent-- but she maintains a firm grip on her only weapon. “You’re not Danny, right?” She can’t stand the shaking in her voice, but she can’t bear the thought. Danny. Raw _human meat_ between his teeth, being torn from a still-writhing victim. Her Danny would never do something so violent, so needlessly cruel. He would be weeping when he is returned to his own body.

 

At length the specter-in-Danny’s-body speaks with that horribly borrowed voice. “I’m sorry,” it says. It looks like her baby, but it isn’t. Maddie needs to remember that as it slowly lowers its human puppet into a crouching position, limber legs tucked neatly beneath it. “I-” It makes a tiny squeaking sound in Danny’s throat, cutting itself off. “I’m so sorry,” and now it is crying, even harder than she is.

 

It is doing exactly what Danny does when he’s deeply upset-- biting its lip, screwing up its face as it tries and fails desperately to withhold the tears. Small, wheezing huffs shake its chest and shoulders, and it drops further to its knees. Tears are streaming steadily down Danny’s blood-streaked cheeks, pooling at the grimacing corners of his mouth and seeping into the filthy cotton of his hoodie sleeves as he scrubs frantically at his cheeks.

 

“I didn’t w-want this, ‘ama,” maybe-Danny insists through his sobs. Danny only calls her mama when he’s truly distraught. If this ghost isn’t a stellar actor… “Please let m-me help. I won’t t-t-touch him without your say-so, b-but _please_ let me h-he-help.” His watery blue eyes are wide and trimmed in red, pleading without words as he kneels.

 

Maddie swallows the whimper swelling in her throat. Why would the ghost do this? Does it just want to get closer to its food source? Does it need Vlad alive for something? She considers her options carefully, studying her son’s body for anything that might give it away.

 

“Okay,” she relents, almost without her consent. The word slips past her lips on some strange impulse-- she knows it’s weak, and it’s risky, but she doesn’t want Danny to cry. This is Danny’s face. He is worrying his lip so hard it’s bleeding and dribbling down his scraped chin; his blood is only red and glittering, no luminous green ectoplasm to be found.

 

Tears marathon down her cheeks, propelled by only a blink. Maddie reaches numbly up to wipe them away as Danny crawls closer and kneels over Vlad. His slim bony hands are moving tremulously over the older man’s ruined suit, peeling fingers ghosting over the blood-soaked satin, picking nervously at his shredded lapels.

 

His startling blue gaze darts up-- he’s noticed Maddie watching. She considers averting her gaze and pretending not to have stared, but instead makes eye contact. “Don’t be scared,” Danny says. Despite the underlying command, his voice is soft and feeble. He reminds Maddie in that moment of a little kid playing soldier, with all the blood on his young face, tears in his hoodie, teen fervor totally absent in his quivering posture.

 

“Okay,” she says again, trying her hardest to stay calm. In her mind she turns over all the things that Danny might do. She knows he is clumsy and sometimes impulsive, so maybe he has first-aid on him? Unlikely, Maddie decides. His hoodie pocket is full of holes that he likes to stick his fingers through, and the threadbare jacket isn’t nearly enough to disguise anything of value.

 

On the other hand, her traitorous mind suggests, maybe Maddie is wrong and that is _not_ Danny and the ghost will sink her son’s stolen teeth deep into Vlad’s exposed throat and finish the job it started. She tightens her grip on the lipstick blaster. Maybe-Danny seems acutely aware of this, tensing as she does.

 

Maddie watches mutely as it sighs through Danny’s teeth. Her son’s palms flare with soft blue light, wispy cool energy that dances easily between his fingers, lingering easily around his knobbly left ring finger that had broken and has healed crooked. He runs his energized hands carefully over Vlad’s injuries. The cool, soothing blue seeps into the cuts and spreads in spiderweb patterns over each place where flesh and skin has been torn away.

 

The temperature drops significantly, but Danny doesn’t seem to notice. Maddie stiffens in place, fighting back a shiver at the sudden chill. A strange smell like winter air and ozone fills the air, which crackles with electric energy. She _knows_ that blue-- it’s icy and distantly soothing, and it’s what the Phantom had used to try and heal a little girl.

 

Danny draws away, shaking violently. His hands are limp and twitching as he slumps backwards. The soft blue light slowly fades, condensing into faintly luminous vapor that disappears into Vlad’s slightly parted mouth. As it does, his pain-creased face relaxes some, and his breathing slowly but surely evens out, a little shallow, but undoubtedly better than the alternative.

 

“What did you do?” Maddie brings herself to ask. Danny’s ashen face is slick with sweat, and he’s panting from the exertion. Without speaking, the boy jerks his head towards Vlad’s chest as it steadily rises and falls. _See for yourself_.

 

Dread coils in her gut like an iron snake as she leans over her college friend. Maddie curls her gloved fingers as carefully as she can into the blood-soaked satin of Vlad’s suit, peeling the wet fabric gingerly away from the gaping lacerations Danny’s rampage has made. Blood pools in the folds of his jacket, mixed with muddy green in some places, and collects in still-warm puddles at the hollow of his throat. It’s a risky move, but she reaches out to probe the site of the worst injury.

 

There are still cuts and bruises on his sharp cheeks, and blood from his nose has clumped up in his salt-and-pepper beard, but he seems otherwise unharmed. Ragged, puckered skin gives under her fingers, but holds, like a scar long since healed over.

 

She stops her examination then, peering expectantly up at Danny, whose eyes are tightly closed. The pieces click together in her mind.

 

He looks like he might be sleeping against the wall, albeit much less peacefully than Vlad. His face is still scrunched up and his breaths come slow and shallow. Maddie watches his chest slowly fall, expecting another inhalation to follow, but there is none. Danny isn’t breathing.

 

But his hands are moving. She watches his fingers curl around egg-white ectoplasm, scooping it up from the floor. He brings those fingers to his lips and sucks on them greedily. This isn’t Danny. This _filthy lying ghost is not Danny_.

 

“Stop that!” Maddie snaps, rolling to her feet. On impulse she fires the lipstick blaster. The pale green projectile whizzes past Danny’s head as he ducks to the side, eyes still closed. A fresh round of tears spills from beneath his lashes, but Maddie pays them no mind-- it’s all a lie.

 

He backs up on his knees, eyes now wide and electric green staring up at her. “No,” he says meekly. “Don’t shoot. It’s me, mom. Danny.” His hands are up in a universal gesture of surrender, shaking as he cowers before her.

 

Maddie screams and fires the blaster again. This time she strikes him solidly in the shoulder, on the same side he got Vlad. She waits, expecting the ghost overshadowing Danny to be forced out and dissipate, but nothing happens. Danny just stares at her, gaping, as the wound bubbles and steams. The plasma has already cauterized it, but the burn is severe and blistering.

  
Danny _howls_ , an unearthly wailing sound, and phases down through the floor.

 

* * *

 

She’s lucky there  _ is _ a phone somewhere in Vlad’s stupid mansion.

 

He is stretched out across the backseat of the GAV with Maddie sitting over him, gingerly bandaging his remaining wounds. Grudgingly, she will admit that the ghost did a good job of healing Vlad, but he needs to be returned to Fentonworks as soon as possible to make sure he hasn’t been poisoned or infected with something.

 

Jack drives slightly less erratically than usual, uncharacteristically silent the entire way home. Maddie herself is in something like psychological shock, the image of Danny’s blazing possessed eyes spinning in her periphery. She tucks her horror and grief away, pulling on her clinical scientist’s mask as she binds and cleans Vlad’s cuts.

 

She will destroy that ghost that took her son. 

 

Together she and Jack carry Vlad into the house, laying him carefully on the living room sofa. It is late now; the sky is city blue-black and dotted with sparse white stars. Dismal grey clouds blot out the watery beams of the moon, but the streetlamps spit warm yellow light back up in their stead. Everything sounds like water in Maddie’s ears, but they must make a lot of noise while moving Vlad, because a sleepy Jazz stumbles down the stairs in a tizzy. She waves her phone flashlight around, and Maddie finds herself proud to note the Fenton Anti-Creep Stick she drags sleepily behind her.

 

She is equally proud when Jazz shoots Vlad a brusque look-- she’s certainly considering using him as a target.

 

“What’s going on?” The girl asks, yawning. “Why’re you covered in…” Jazz squints, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Is that  _ blood _ ?”

 

Maddie nods numbly. “Don’t worry, sweetie. It’s Vlad’s, and he’s okay now.” She watches her daughter’s freckled face pinch in a reluctantly sympathetic expression.

  
“Where’s Danny?” 


	19. Hate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He is obsessed with an impossible ideal, and it's killing him. So, so slowly.  
>  CW: physical abuse, abusive relationship.

The false-gold band on her left ring finger stings his velvet cheek when it makes unforgiving contact. It was once his father’s, then his, now hers.

 

She is shouting again into his ear, and he wilts beneath her gaze like a worm in the sun. He is less than a worm, though. Her eyes are faceted amethyst held in front of a fire, refracting hot light and throwing vicious red sparks that singe new freckles onto his wax-paper cheeks. Each acerbic word of complaint she spits is like another needle through his eye, drawing long threads into his muddled  grey matter that is not so grey as Christmas-come-early red and green inside. The strings become wires that cut pieces out of his head so they'll drip from his mouth when they kiss so she can get rid of them. It means so, so much to her that he is so compliant: he wants her to be happy. He is obsessed with keeping her happy.

 

It is not an easy job.

 

He has done something wrong again, but he is much too tired to feel appropriately contrite. Her lips are full and plush-purple with cherry blue gloss and just the right kind of chapped to make friction with his tongue. She leans in with them, but not to kiss. She makes angry, angry noises at him, hissing through perfect alabaster teeth. Her polished black nails are shiny as she gesticulates, and he lets his gaze follow the sparkle. He says nothing as she rants and screams herself hoarse, a bubble of shame blooming in his tightened chest. It is awful to see her so upset.

 

A fantasy of lips peeled back to show bent-knife bone flits through his chastised brain. It is swollen with fluid from the concussion and scarred up by her assault: her furious shouting is water in his ears that drips down his neck to pool in his scars and turn to frost on his skin. It hurts like salt on wounds and Odin's rose in his lungs, but he does not defend himself. He can never hurt her, so he will endure until she is spent. He does not hiss back.

 

Her values mean so, so much: they are her everything. It makes him feel disgusting to know that he’s upset her.

 

The class ring cuts his forehead once and cheeks twice more before she is done. Anger bleeds into his veins like absolute zero, blocks of dry ice in his sluggish lungs, but he does not raise his hand against her. He cannot. If he does he will hurt her and that will hurt him, but most importantly it will hurt _her_. She sticks around because he is special: too weird to live, too rare to die. He fascinates her, and that makes her happy, he thinks. He likes it when she is happy. If he hurts her, he will cease to be of interest. So he cannot strike back. Will not. His split lip weeps dark iron drops, and he licks them numbly up when they drip onto his chin.

 

She has left through the front door, and it swings wide open into the night. The evening is the color of denim and cranberry as the sun slides down against the firmament of the sky. He closes it behind her. School tomorrow will not be uncomfortable. The tang of blood on his tongue is welcome and familiar, and it will not wash out for longer than a week before they will do this again. Tucker doesn't need to know a thing, because it's nothing. He must stay happy. If he is not happy that must mean he is hurt, and if he is hurt, so will Danny be.

 

Sam will apologize, maybe. Maybe not, but they will return to normal.

 

They always do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry. this is some weird au i guess? sam needs to rearrange her priorities and danny is ghostly-obsessed with making his humans happy and keeping them that way, no matter what. this has been going on for a long time


	20. Momma's Boy Part III: Phantom

Danny is barreling intangibly through pitch-dark layers of concrete foundation and ashy earth. He can smell the oil and the city filth interrupting the organic tang of compost and pine needles as he passes through pipelines and sewers. Even then, the quasi-industrial stench of nowhere, Wisconsin can’t overpower the sting of blood and ectoplasm in his nose.

 

He breaks the surface with a gasp of air he doesn’t need, vision a haze of green and grey in the night. The burn on his shoulder is already cauterized by plasma, already scarring over, but Danny can feel the wind dig its nails into the open blisters as he flies low against the treeline.

 

The throbbing pain in his shoulder is nothing compared to the tightness in his chest, like a boa constrictor is hugging his necrotic lungs and digging its teeth into his sluggish heart. He is little more than a faintly whimpering streak of green-and-white against the dusky country sky.

 

Amity Park is a fair distance over state lines from Vlad’s extravagant chalet, but with a top speed clocking near two-hundred miles per hour as of his most recent training session, Danny is there in what feels like an instant. Training session. Less than a month ago he had been dealing with brilliantly inane things like those. Will he ever do that again? His stomach turns and growls as he alights on a streetlamp, breathless from his crying.

 

Danny blinks the tears from his lashes, scrubbing at his face with his knuckles. He only succeeds in smearing blood on his cheek to mix with the ectoplasm already drying there. He can’t be seen like this. His chest only tightens further as he gasps and sputters. He wants to throw up, but only ropes of briny saliva escape him.

 

There is no way in Hell he can possibly go to Sam or Tucker right now-- they’ll ask questions. Danny doesn’t think he can possibly answer them in a state like this, and he knows that his friends won’t drop the subject if he asks them to. They care far too much. Retreating to the Ghost Zone crosses his mind, but he quickly discards the idea. Despite everything, he has enemies there, and his lenience makes him a target. Danny can’t handle that, not now.

 

Briefly, he considers flying to a residential area and knocking on a door for help. Someone like Dash or Paulina, dedicated ‘Phans,’ would be more than willing to help him clean up and recover. But that doesn’t sit well with him either: to see their hero covered in gore will raise questions, start rumors. That isn’t a risk Danny has the emotional or mental capacity to handle right now should things get out of hand.

 

He is left with one dismal option: sleep in the street. Stay as Phantom and perch in a tree, perhaps, stay invisible and silent until morning. Danny even has the means to squat in an apartment or hotel if he so dares, but the idea of taking boarding without permission just makes him feel worse. Using his powers to steal isn’t in his nature, even if a small part of him feels that he deserves someplace safe and dry to sleep.

 

Sniffling piteously, Danny pushes off from the street light, instinctively fading from the visible spectrum as he flies. His Hunger has been quelled for the moment by going after Vlad, but healing him immediately after leaves his roiling stomach feeling empty and hot. He’ll need to hunt soon if he wants to stay calm, but Amity Park is much more densely populated by small, mindless spirits that Danny doesn’t feel too bad about eating, so he’s much safer than he was in Madison.

 

In that regard Danny feels safe, but that is regrettably the most he can claim. He ducks into an alley between two houses, only a street over from Fentonworks. He can feel the buzz of the portal in the air, smells the distinct ozone-and-lime stink of fresh ectoplasm on the wind. It is risky to settle so close to his… family’s home, but the protective, possessive little voice in his hindbrain refuses to leave his territory behind without a fight.

 

Besides, he needs to make sure Jazz is okay, and Mom is okay, and even that Vlad is okay. Especially Vlad, Danny decides, guilt prickling like hot needles in his chest. He doesn’t hate the older halfa, not really. They bristle and snap their teeth at every chance meeting, but in the end they have never  _ really _ tried to hurt one another. Not seriously, anyway.

 

Until now.

 

That self-loathing horror sits like a coal in Danny’s belly, burning a hole through the lining of his gut. He and Vlad have always walked a razor’s edge between half-playful scrimmaging and actual ill-meaning altercations. He has accepted this from very early on: it’s part of the job description to get a into a little donnybrook every now and then. Until now, though, Danny has never imagined that  _ he himself  _ would be the one to cross the line and cause lasting harm to his opponent.

 

He wants to stop thinking about it, so he pushes the remaining Hunger to the forefront of his brain. His body moves on autopilot, conscious thought easing into a soothing bath of mock-sleep. Danny can only liken it to the early morning haze during which one is not yet awake, but just aware enough to know  _ quiet _ and  _ safe _ and  _ warm _ nestled into the covers, only this time he knows  _ Hungry _ and  _ scared _ and  _ alone _ .

 

But to his muddled brain things like fear and helplessness are nebulous concepts upon which he has no solid grasp. Hunger is all that is concrete in his world now, so Danny coils his spectral tail beneath him and shoots up over the buildings. His shoulder is still stinging, but the pain has ebbed somewhat, and he pushes himself a little harder. From his eagle-eyed vantage point above the streets, he can see the faint green-blue glow of unwary prey as it floats aimlessly over a house.

 

It is a small, mindless spirit-- little more than a clump of ambient ectoplasm that has gathered and condensed into a faintly blobbish shape. It has no distinct mouth, and its eyes are faintly indented pits in the jelly of its ectoplasmic flesh-- laughably easy Food to sneak up on.

 

Danny dives for it, and his teeth close around its bulbous head before it can so much as squeak. He carries his kill back over the street, to the alley by Fentonworks. The tiny spirit’s slimy body is still twitching and cool in his mouth, and it spasms briefly as he drops it onto the pavement. Immediately, he braces his Food with his two arms, pressing it hard against the filthy concrete, tail whipping dangerously as he buries his nose into the gooey meal before him.

 

He slurps up gluey ectoplasm, tearing away strips of thin, membranous skin and swallowing them whole. He takes more bites, lapping at the pooling ghost-blood until there is nothing left but a sticky stain on the pavement. That’s better, Danny notes, allowing some small consciousness to resurface in his satisfaction, but the throbbing tightness of horror in his chest returns. He shoves his Hunger back up, willing himself to drown.

 

If he keeps on like this, he knows he will never stop being Hungry, and he will stop being a halfa and just be Hungry. All the time. But it hurts to be Full and to have a clear head, and stubbornly, stupidly, Danny refuses to think on it.

 

There is another place that has Food. The buzzing-place with the portal is an option, but it reeks of chemicals and ghost-hate and unhappy humans: he does not want to go there. So he goes to the next best place, a human-lair that houses a human called Tucker who is Danny’s friend. Ha. So many human-things.

 

Tucker keeps Food in his wall for Danny for when he is desperately Hungry, in case the buzzing-place is not safe to eat at, or if he cannot catch anything. Privately, Danny thinks this is a very nice thing for Tucker to do, because sometimes wild Food is not easy to find and even harder to catch, especially when he is very, very Hungry. So he flies in through the roof, intangible.

 

His friend is sleeping soundly in his nest in his tiny lair, which is inside the big human-lair that holds all his family. Danny thinks that Tucker is not very good at protecting his territory, because he does not even stir when the halfa invades his domain and sticks an intangible hand through the wall to take his Food.

 

It is in a container which is made out of glass, with a popping-cork lid that Danny can pull out with his teeth. The plastic crunches loudly between his incisors as he tears it away and tips the bottle up against his lips. Cool, dense Food slides easily down his throat, making his eyes feel weak and heavy-lidded. His belly feels so, so Full, but Danny tries very desperately to keep the Hunger between himself and his hurt feelings. It doesn’t really work.

 

The throbbing hurt in his chest is back in full force as Danny watches his best friend sleep soundly. Tight ringlets of short black curls, usually tucked beneath his beret, are splayed out beneath his head like a glossy halo. The halfa hums softly, no longer muddle-brained, but still not quite awake, and floats over the human boy where he sleeps in his tangle of blankets. His chest rises and falls steadily, strong brown hands curled over the edge of the comforter. He slides in against Tucker’s side without thinking, tucking his silvery head under the other boy’s arm. The human mumbles in his sleep, but does not wake as Danny curls his tail around his legs, more for his own comfort than for Tucker’s.

 

He is glad that the human reflexes of tear production and diaphragmal spasms are ones he can suppress.

 

At 3:43 AM, Tucker’s sudden spike in heart rate jerks Danny from his sleep. He jolts upright, lip curled and a growl bubbling in his throat to scare off whatever has frightened his friend. He whips around, tail coiled protectively around the now-upright Tuck’s bare chest.

 

“Danny?” The boy breathes. The halfa turns to face him, willing himself to relax as he realizes there is no threat at all. It stings to see that Tucker is afraid of  _ him _ , but as his head clears it occurs to Danny that he must be quite a sight.

 

He hums a soft affirmative and drifts off of Tuck’s bed, phasing through the wall into the bathroom. He sees himself in the mirror and freezes for a long moment at what he finds-- silvery hair matted into stiff spikes by mixed ectoplasm and blood, dry leaves and peels of bark clinging to top of the shaggy mess. His mouth is painted at the corners by a muddy green-brown, dried in flaking lines where it has dripped down onto his chin. Danny’s face looks gaunt and pale, distinctly corpse-blue in the dim early-morning light. His milky green irises are ringed in stark blood-red, and not the kind from sleeplessness.

 

Tucker is standing behind him, Danny knows because he can hear his bare footsteps on the creaky hardwood floor and the way the soles of his feet go  _ pap pap pap _ on the bathroom tile. He can hear his best friend’s stuttering heartbeat as he mumbles Danny’s name.

 

“Hey,” Danny says. He turns on the tap without turning around, and dunks his head under it. Cold water cascades over his filthy hair and drips in numbing rivulets down onto his nose, but he doesn’t feel any cleaner. Droplets pool in the folds of his high-necked hazmat suit, sneaking down against his throat and onto his chest.

 

He turns around slowly, hesitant to meet Tuck’s dark-eyed gaze. “Are you okay, dude?” He asks.

 

Danny can’t help but snort at that, rolling his eyes. “Peachy,” he deadpans, but without real bite.

 

Tuck’s mouth twitches as though he’s halfway to smiling but too nervous to finish. “Sorry,” he all but whispers. “Standard question.”

 

“I know.”

 

Uneasy silence swells between them as they stand, and float, respectively, in the dim bathroom. The dawn sky outside is grey-white and cold, casting watery beams of light in through the little window above and to the left of the toilet.

 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Tucker asks. His hand is warm and solid on Danny’s shoulder, squeezing gently. When Danny shakes his head he withdraws, shifting nervously in place. “Do you want to use my shower?” He ventures, wringing his hands against his chest. When Danny nods he cracks a vague smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Okay, champ. I’ll go grab you a towel. Know how to work the tap?”

 

Another wordless nod. Danny can’t bring himself to speak past the lump in his throat. “Okay,” Tucker says tenderly, as though his friend might shatter should he speak too harshly. Maybe he will. “I’ll go grab that and some spare clothes for you.”

 

His heartbeat is too fast for him to be calm, and the very distinct Tucker-beat of blood is muffled by the walls as he heads back into his room. With a thought Danny returns to human form and begins to strip, peeling blood-crusted clothes from his body until they’re a Christmas-colored pile  against the rim of the tub. He stares at himself in the mirror for what feels like a long time, taking in all the little divots in his flesh where mixed ectoplasm and blood has pooled and dried into sticky brown clumps.

 

Danny very nearly wrenches the shower tap out of the wall when he makes to turn it on. When the metal creaks dangerously beneath his grip, he stops, bloody hands shaking uncontrollably. Taking a deep steadying breath, he turns the knob until the water comes out strong and warm from the showerhead. He steps over the rim of the tub, pushing the curtain aside with utmost care, suddenly hyperaware of his own strength.

 

The congealed blood on his skin all but melts beneath the hot spray of water, fleeing in dark rivulets that trickle with the rest of the water over his pale flesh. The red and brown and green stands out in sharp relief against his nakedness, and it only makes him feel dirtier when they disappear into the shower drain. Disposing of evidence, a nasty little piece of him supposes. Because he is a criminal now.

 

He is all but numb to the way the water attacks his still-raw burns and stinging cuts. He reaches awkwardly for the washcloth on its hook on the wall, saturating it with Tucker’s sharp-scented body wash. It smells like tangy fruit and the ocean and sandalwood, and it makes Danny’s eyes water as it mixes with the iron stink of blood. He doesn’t stop scrubbing even as the soap bites at his open wounds, moving with greater and greater vigor as yet more muddy blood peels away from his skin.

 

It’s not enough. He bites back a half-screaming whimper as he digs his nails into the burn on his shoulder. He doesn’t stop until dark coppery green starts to ooze thickly from the furrows he draws like tar. It is cold under his fingernails, and stains them nacreous black. Vlad has red blood. Why doesn’t he?

 

In the back of his mind he knows the answer-- something sciencey and convoluted regarding his current stage of development in relation to Vlad’s upon receiving his powers, et cetera ad infinitum. Danny doesn’t really care about DNA bonding and mutations and genetic variability. None of those things matter to him because he feels dirty in a way showers can’t resolve. He’s irredeemably filthy, inside and out. 

 

Vlad, the conniving bastard, can officially say he has greater right to Danny’s family than Danny does. Vlad, the scheming, manipulative creep that he is, is still more human and more inherently  _ good _ than Danny is. He can’t stop thinking about it. Danny numbly coaxes the stiff blood from his matted dark hair, wincing as the heavily stained water trickles over his nose and clings to his lip.

 

Now that they’re clean and unobstructed, he can feel his wounds repairing themselves. The raw burned skin begins to knit itself back together, while the cuts and bruises are little more than memories. He stares vacantly at the plain white-grey tile of the wall, biting his lip. Why is he healing? Why does he deserve to heal? Why must his body do this when it’s so  _ inhuman _ ?

 

On impulse, Danny curls his fingers against the soft skin of his inner forearm until it breaks. More dark not-blood spills thickly from the cuts as he drags his fingers further. He can’t withhold his breathless cry of pain as his supernatural body tries and fails to heal around his nails. Reluctantly, he withdraws. The deep cuts are little more than faint pink lines against the green-veined white flesh of his wrist.

 

He needs to do something more. Something for what he’d done. Shakily, he turns off the tap and steps out of the tub. He opens the drawer where he knows Tuck keeps first aid and cotton swabs and needles and thread. And scissors.

 

Danny breaks them in half and stares at the weapon in his hand. He drags the sharp edge over his palm and watches dumbly as the cut closes again. Blood is roaring in his ears and drowning out everything else. He needs it to stop.

 

“ _ Danny _ !” He jerks and drops the blade. He can’t quite make out Tucker’s racing heartbeat over the pounding in his head. Danny chokes. This is a stupid idea. This is dumb. His legs crumple beneath him and he buries his face in his hands. 

 

His body is wracked with involuntary sobs that constrict his chest and steal his fleeting breaths. He whimpers unintelligibly through the lattice of his fingers, grasping desperately at the cotton hem of his best friend’s shorts. 

 

Tuck helps him to his feet and drapes a beach towel over his quaking shoulders. Danny follows placidly as his best friend’s warm brown hands push him into a sitting position on his bed. He can’t see through the haze of tears, can’t hear over his own gasping sobs. Tucker is rubbing soothing circles on his back through the towel, calloused fingers carding gently through his hair.

 

“Easy, easy,” Danny hears him say. “It’s gonna be okay, champ. It’s okay.”

  
He shakes his head, but can’t bring himself to speak. It’s not okay. Nothing is okay right now. Danny screams into Tucker’s chest, whimpering and sobbing until his emotions are spent.


	21. Momma's Boy Part IV: Jazz

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vlad is taken back to Fentonworks and left home alone with Jazz: she needs answers.  
> CW: violence, suicide mention

The thumping and slamming of the front door coaxes Jazz awake sometime close to three in the morning. Groaning, she swings her legs over the side of her bed, untangles herself from her ridden-up nightshirt, and stumbles out into the hall with a yawn. 

 

She pivots to grab her phone for light, and makes her way to Danny’s room with a scowl on her face. It isn’t unusual for her brother to be up at times like this, fighting ghosts or something like that, but Jazz wishes through her irritation that he would be a little quieter about it.

 

His bedroom door is ajar, and she pushes it open. The window is shut, all lights are off-- it is pitch-dark save the dim early light and the faint green-blue shine of the star stickers on his ceiling. Jazz is careful to poke at his blankets in the dark, in case he’s stumbled upon accidental invisibility. There is no cold body beneath the sheets.

 

Jazz huffs and gets down on her knees to peer under the bed, exasperation changing to a tight spark of concern in her chest. He hasn’t phased through the mattress, either. She waves and flails in hopes of finding a chilly spot where her ghost brother is sleep-floating, or something, but comes back empty-handed and anxious.

 

Another series of bangs and clatters sounds from downstairs, and Jazz can’t help but tense, anxiety knotting in her gut. She’s done her best to distance herself from her parents’ obsessive ghost-hunting, but having family with a myriad of spectral enemies tends to quicken the reflexes on principal of simply being involved.

 

She gropes frantically in the dark till her fingers meet the rubber-wrapped handle of an aluminum baseball bat. Briefly, she wonders why exactly her brother had it under his bed, but upon closer consideration this really shouldn’t surprise her. If the trend continues, Jazz is almost certain it has the word ‘Fenton’ on it. As stupid as that may be, she doesn’t find it in her to do more than roll her eyes. The weapon is sturdy, and she knows how to use it if need be. That’s all that matters.

 

Mounting curiosity makes her brave. Carefully, the teen creeps along the hall, flashlight in one hand and bat in the other. In the dimness she can make out her father’s broad-shouldered figure, and her mother’s hippy curves not far behind. They’re carrying something, some _ one _ , into the house.

 

It doesn’t seem to be an actively dangerous situation, Jazz thinks, so she turns on her flashlight and stumbles downstairs. A growl rises in her throat at who they’re holding. Vengeful protectiveness comes alight in her chest and makes her fume. 

 

She considers it an accomplishment of herculean proportions that she doesn’t throw her bat right down on the unprotected groin of Vlad Masters when she sees him. Her parents are lowering him onto the sofa, wrapping him in a sheet.

 

“What’s going on?” She asks through a yawn. Despite her upset, she’s still exhausted. 

 

Jazz can see something strange, though, and her heart does a funny little jig as she leans over the stairs to see. The cream-colored linen is turning dark, and she squints to make out what’s on it. Something with a shiny red sheen that drips from the folds of a torn-up suit jacket. Her stomach is in knots as she speaks.

 

“Why’re you covered in... “ She stops to stare a little longer, rubbing sleep from her eyes. Just to make sure she’s seeing things right. “Is that  _ blood _ ?”

 

Jazz stares incredulously as her parents lower Vlad onto the sofa, helping him into a sitting position. He is covered in blood but seems almost entirely unharmed. His unfocused eyes are rolling wildly, and his usually-strong hands are shaking as he grips the flimsy sheet Maddie has procured from the closet to protect the couch.

 

It’s really pitiful. She doesn’t even need the baseball bat, aluminum and everything.

 

“Don’t worry, sweetie.” Jazz blinks owlishly at her mother, fear prickling along her spine. Maddie’s face is ashen and damp; the sheen on her cheeks is most definitely from tears. “It’s Vlad’s, and he’s okay now.”

 

The teen nods hesitantly. As much as she dislikes him, the billionaire looks supremely shaken up. That digs a pit of dread in her belly: she knows how strong he is when he wants to be. It must be something really bad, if the amount of blood is any indication. He’s smeared it in handprints on the sofa, and it’s drying on her parents’ clothes.

 

There’s just  _ so much _ of it. Jazz feels sick.

 

“Where’s Danny?” She blurts out. He  _ isn’t _ in the house, but Vlad  _ is _ , and that is most certainly not normal.

 

Evidently, that question is a bombshell.  Her father looks concerned, and a little lost as he lets his old college friend squeeze his big meaty hand. 

 

Her mother, on the other hand, looks totally stricken, wide-eyed and white-faced with abject horror. Vlad’s clouded eyes are just wide as he shakes, looking completely and utterly flabbergasted.

 

“He’s not in his room?” Maddie asks. She doesn’t really sound surprised, in fact, she seems to have adopted some steely sort of resignation that makes Jazz uneasy. 

 

“No.”

 

“I didn’t think so,” she sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Go get some towels and a hot washcloth-- we need to clean Vladdie up before he gets an infection. Jack,” she turns to her husband and places a hand on his forearm. 

 

“Some fresh clothes, please? Yours will do fine.” She leans over and begins to peel the remains of the elder halfa’s blood-soaked suit from his heaving chest. “I’ll explain everything once we’re all settled.”

 

Reluctantly, Jazz obeys, turning around and heading to the laundry room. She pulls towels from their pile atop the dryer, deliberately picking colored beach towels and rattier specimens that no one will mind having to throw away afterwards. After that she reaches into the cabinet for a fresh washcloth, and turns on the tap. 

 

Her head is spinning. A large part of her knows that Danny is involved, and given  _ Vlad’s _ condition, she is rightfully concerned. Is he okay? Alive? If something has shown up that’s strong enough to cut Vlad Plasmius to ribbons, leave him a whimpering mess, what on Earth might it be doing to  _ Danny _ ? Her throat feels tight at the thought. Jazz shoves it away. 

 

The water is more than hot enough, so she soaks the towel and brings the lot of it back into the living room.

 

Her parents are in the careful process of propping Vlad up into a sitting position. His suit jacket has been peeled from his heaving chest, discarded in tatters on the living room floor. His hard tanned chest is absolutely ravaged-- rows of parallel cuts like animal scratches, dark blooming bruises, and a risen patch of angry yellow-pink that looks like a half-healed burn. There is a divot at the joining of neck and shoulder that is definitely not a part of his musculature: Vlad is  _ missing flesh _ .

 

Jazz feels a little sick, not only at the sight of his wounds but the idea of what has made them. All this, done to Vlad Plasmius, who has a twenty-year head start? What about young, inexperienced Danny Phantom? 

 

Each of Vlad’s anxious breath pushes iron beads of blood from some of the most savage cuts, and they drip down to pool at his navel like grenadine. 

 

He looks impossibly old and frail in that moment. His long silvery hair is undone and spilling in blood-matted snarls over his shoulders. He’s squeezing Jack’s hand in a shaking vice-grip, as though his old college friend- who he  _ hates _ -might disappear if he lets go.

 

It’s all  _ so wrong.  _

 

Jazz shuffles ungainly to where her mother is awkwardly fretting over her old friend. She thrusts the washcloth into Maddie’s hands, clutching the remaining towels close against her chest as she backpedals to watch from a safe distance.

Vlad looks deeply grateful as Maddie gently cleans his injuries. Under any other circumstances, that would irk Jazz, but she sees the desperate fear in his wild steel-blue eyes, the way he shakes, nigh-imperceptibly flinches when her mom’s cool gloved hands brush his bare skin.

 

He’s  _ terrified _ . “Oh, Pariah’s Grave,” he chokes hoarsely, “I was so, so wrong…” 

 

“Mister Masters,” slips as a whispered half-question past Jazz’s dry lips. Her tongue feels like clumsy lead in her mouth. She silences herself with a faint clicking of colliding teeth.

 

Maddie pauses her gentle scrubbing at the dried blood on Vlad’s neck to pull out a first-aid kit-- they always have one in the house in case of emergency, which is not all too uncommon given the Fentons’ line of work. 

 

Now that they are clean enough to dress, she sees to his wounds. Carefully, she goes about cleaning and bandaging each cut, rubbing cheap OTC pain-relief cream on the worst of the mottled purple bruises that decorate his throat. 

 

Jazz stares, eyes narrowed. Vlad will be loving this, she knows, leaning into Maddie’s touches and huffing through half-lidded lustful eyes despite his injuries. 

 

Or not: he just stares dazedly at the wall over her shoulder. He starts at every even remotely forceful touch, tears leaking from his red-rimmed eyes as Maddie winds bandages tight over the junction between neck and shoulder.

 

“Do you want to wash your hair?” Maddie asks, eyeing the blood-matted tangles with some mild distaste. Here it comes.

 

“Yes, p-please.”

 

Oh. Did he just  _ stutter _ ? She can’t believe her ears.

 

He leans heavily on Jazz’s mother as she corrals him towards the kitchen sink. It’s evidently not the best way to go about this, but it’s closer and more spacious than the bathroom. Besides, given the amount of rogue ectoplasmic samples that run rampant over the countertops, a little bit of Vlad’s blood in the sink should hardly make much difference. 

 

Maddie helps him to lean over the sink and turns on the tap. Vlad doesn’t even seem to care that she is lathering his scalp with the sort of mild dish soap used to clean lost ducklings. He just stands there and takes it as a ratty towel is draped over his shoulders, whimpering piteously as Maddie scrubs his head dry. He limps obediently abreast her and sits immediately when prompted, as if lacking the will to act for himself.

 

Jazz watches in silent bafflement as he leans heavily on her father to step out of his bloodied slacks, allows Jack to guide his trembling arms through the sleeves of an oversized Skunk-Punks tee. It's like a dress on Vlad’s more compact form, and pools loosely in his lap and covers his half-naked thighs almost up to the knee.

 

“Something warm to drink, Vladdie?” Jack’s voice is not quiet, but it holds a tenderness rarely used. Maddie drapes a knitted blanket from the closet over the man’s shoulders. It is garish and complex with needlepoint ghosts and rolling blue waves. Vlad, lord of the genteel and pretentious, doesn’t even flinch, doesn’t look at Maddie even once.

 

Baffled, Jazz can see Vlad squeezing the bigger man’s hand as he nods feverishly. “Please,” he croaks, and his fingers go limp.

 

Her father leans in until his nose is pressed against Masters’ sweaty hairline. He plants the gentlest kiss on Vlad’s forehead, above and between his brows. It is perhaps the single most nuanced thing Jazz has ever seen her father do.

 

“On it, V-man.” The fleeting moment of intimacy passes as Jack pats his friend on the back and retreats into the kitchen. Vlad stares after him with an unreadable expression, eyes misty. The way he looks at Maddie feels somehow plastic in comparison. Jazz would take notes on any other day.

 

“Mister Masters,” Jazz repeats as she lowers herself cautiously onto the sofa, and he turns stiffly to face her. The question must show on her face, because his taut expression softens just a fraction as he sighs.

 

He stares at her for a long moment before nodding slightly, as though confirming something to himself. “A story for another day, Jasmine.” Shakily, he swings his head towards her mother. “May we have a moment alone?” He asks, tone vaguely pleading.

 

Maddie narrows her deep indigo-blue eyes, arms crossed. Jazz doesn't blame her, but nods to let her know it's okay. Her mother nods hesitantly back and turns around. 

 

Jazz watches her until she's disappeared into the kitchen, and waits an agonizing moment more until she can hear hushed voices wafting from the room. She opens her mouth with intent to begin a conversation with Vlad anew, but her mother’s head pops out from behind the doorframe.

 

Her copper-colored hair bobs distractingly as she sighs. “Jack and I are going to look for Danny.” Maddie’s voice is hard with unspoken threat as she continues, “Can I trust you to  _ get along  _ while we’re out?”

 

Vlad nods fervently, and Jazz hears herself say “Yes, of course.” Her stomach is in knots and it must show on her face, because her mother shoots a sympathetic glance as she turns around.

 

“Don’t worry,” Maddie consoles. “Danny will be fine; we’ll find him. I promise.”

 

“Be careful,” Vlad says suddenly, intensely. There is deep fear in his voice, and Jazz can see his strong fingers tighten against the hem of his tee.

 

“What happened to Danny?” She asks abruptly, wringing her hands over the hem of her nightshirt. She  _ needs _ to know.

 

For his part, Vlad just pales. His tanned cheeks drain of yet more color as his breath hitches and he seems to simply curl in on himself. “Oh,” he whispers. 

 

Jazz can’t circumnavigate the rising lump in her throat. “Please,” she chokes hoarsely. “I need to know. Please tell me what happened-- To him. To  _ you _ .”

 

“Okay.” The older halfa sighs explosively, dragging his fingers down over his face to wipe away the tear-tracks. Jazz can still barely believe that he of all people has been  _ crying. _ “I-I’ll try.”

 

“Thank you, Mister Masters.” She can't keep the tremor from her voice even as Vlad lattices his fingers in with her offered hand. His cool grip tightens almost imperceptibly around Jazz’s sweaty palm as she studies him.

 

He just looks so  _ old _ . Without his straight dark suit and slick silver gel to make him seem powerful and clean and professional, Vlad just looks like a kicked puppy. His grey hair falls in still-damp ringlets that frame his unshaven face and haunted, bloodshot blue eyes. Jazz watches the tendons tighten in his neck as he swallows and shudders against her. 

 

“Daniel,” Vlad finally begins, piercing the bubble of anxiety in her stomach with his raspy baritone mumbling. “He- I… I underestimated his… vice, I t-think it would be in English.”

 

“Vice,” Jazz prompts, brows furrowed. Given the need for translation, it's a safe bet to presume that this is an issue specific to ghost culture.  _ But he didn't use the word ‘obsession _ ,’ She notes, so it may be something different.

 

“Yes,” the halfa confirms, steadying himself enough to speak evenly. “I imagine you are thinking of the word in the traditional sense.” His stormy blue eyes bore into Jazz with a sudden, desperate intensity. Voice steeped in fresh gravity, he continues. “It's not so easy for ghosts.”

 

Jazz nods and tries her hardest not to squirm under Vlad’s gaze. She can't help but feel pinned, like a specimen under a microscope. 

 

“Like an obsession?” She manages.

 

Vlad gives her a thinly veiled look of intrigue, but does not call her out. “It is a similar burden,” he admits. “Ghostly obsessions and vices tend to go hand in hand.”

 

“The difference is, however,” he stops to collect his thoughts, voice taut. “While obsessions are most often relatively benign-- th-that is, something that the ghost will be able to enjoy for the rest of their afterlife-- vices are much less pleasant, at least as far as I have researched.”

 

He clears his throat awkwardly, face flushed with discomfort. “A ghostly vice is…  _ punishment,  _ for lack of a better word. It doesn't affect other ectoplasmic creatures; only those born of human passing. People like you and I are not meant to exist beyond death, so there must be payment to continue.”

 

“Most can just die quietly, but others have fixations, obsessions, that drive them to remain on earth. It has to mean enough for them to  _ pay _ . It’s complicated,” he confesses, looking stricken.

 

Jazz nods carefully. “Seems like it,” she agrees, swallowing a cold pill of anxiety. “But what does this have to do with Danny?” She wets her dry lips anxiously, shaking her head. “What’s his… vice?”

 

Vlad narrows his eyes, shoulders hunched defensively. “I ha-have,” he chokes, all semblance of composure rolling off his back like rain on a duck. “An idea.”

 

“Please tell me, Mister Masters.”

 

“He-” the man cuts himself off, shaking hand pressed gingerly against the rapidly-healing wound on his shoulder. Something clicks for Jazz. Oh  _ no _ .

 

“ _ Oh, no _ .” The room is spinning. Her chest is too tight and her lungs are slacking off and her heart runs at a hummingbird-beat as her mind struggles to connect this new information with what she already knows. In that moment, Jazz wishes she could just be unextraordinary. Her brilliant mind connects the dots far too well.

 

She caught Danny eating contaminated hot dogs only a few weeks after having discovered his secret. At the time, Jazz had figured that he just needed the ectoplasm and the wieners were technically normal human food  _ anyway _ , so she hadn’t thought anything of it.

 

It was laughably easy. She sometimes felt - more so than heard, just the chill in the air as he passed - Danny moving past her room and down the stairs into the kitchen and then down into the lab. He was stealing the ectoplasm from their parents’ experiments, she knew. After the C.A.T. incident, Jazz remembers Danny having told her how terrible the lab-stored ectoplasm tastes, chemical and fake and sour.

 

Jazz hadn’t really considered the idea that he was having any other kind. Where would he get it?

 

All of the data fits. Vice is punishment: Danny’s greatest fear is of rejection, the loss of his humanity, separation from the cushion of civil society. For all the atrocities of murder and theft in the world, the rape and deceit, to devour one’s own is a near-universal taboo. It’s something even most dumb animals skirt with a wide berth, something that takes the perpetrator and makes him something even worse than a simple beast. 

 

The ultimate catalyst for rejection, segregation, ostracization. A universal marker for lack of something human and virtuous and good that all good and civil people have; even that all dickish and uncouth types have, at least a little. 

 

Evil genius, it is. A physical manifestation of her brother’s deepest psychological flaws, his selfishness, his impulsivity-- all wrapped up in a neat little bundle of horror that exploits his most closely-held and personal fears.

 

It makes Jazz feel sick. 

 

“I had not thought,” Vlad mumbles. “I didn’t think Daniel could have something like…  _ that _ .”

 

She nods numbly. “Yeah,” Jazz croaks, dry throat crackling pathetically. “It’s a cruel payment.”

 

The old man just stares at her incredulously, eyes wide. Jazz shrinks under his stricken gaze: she thought that was the right thing to say, but evidently she’s wrong. “You don’t understand, Jasmine.” He shakes his head, running his long tanned fingers through his hair in a vain attempt to soothe himself. With a sigh, he somewhat collects himself and begins to speak again. “Let me tell you the story of my vice, alright?”

 

Jazz nods placidly. “Sure. Sorry.”

 

“It’s fine,” Vlad dismisses, voice feeble. His dark blue eyes grow misty and distant as he nods to himself. “My portal accident occurred while your parents and I were in college. I’m sure you already know that.” He wrings his hands in his lap, continuing. “I was mad at your father, for one, even before the accident. He spent all his time with your mother, you know.” A fond smile tugs at his thin lips, and he glances almost amusedly down at Jazz. “It was stupid, really. I was a jealous youth. Envious over nothing at all.”

 

“Because you wanted my mom?” Jazz asks, distaste curling in her gut.

 

Vlad actually  _ laughs _ . “To get away from  _ my _ best friend, yes.”

 

She can’t help the small smile that curls the corners of her own mouth at that. The warmth, the sincerity in his voice. Jazz doesn’t think Vlad has  _ ever _ talked like this before, let alone in front of someone. It just makes her feel even worse about what happened with her little brother. “You’re hopeless,” she jokes on reflex, and Vlad doesn’t bat an eye.

 

“I’ve figured as much,” he replies without missing a beat, the smile on his face dropping into a concerned frown. “I suppose that’s where the pleasantries end, dear girl. The accident landed me in the hospital-- quarantined. I can’t really blame your mother and father for not visiting, given that, but it still felt… unfair.

 

“That’s where my vice came in. If I couldn’t have my b-best friend, neither could Madeline, you see. My ghost half took that petty jealousy and latched onto it: it became my obsession.”

 

Jazz arches a brow. She doesn’t like the slippery nuance of those statements, quietly shedding the blame for his actions. Vlad may be hurt and weakened, but that doesn’t exempt him from silver-tongued schemes. “I’m not stupid,” she mumbles, halfway under her breath. If he hears it, (which he probably will, given Danny’s uncanny ability to sense her coming from across the house,) she’ll deal with it. If not, good riddance to the effort.

 

“I am not trying to absolve myself of blame, Jasmine.” Vlad’s gaze is cloudy, voice soft. Sad. “I know what I’ve been doing. How unfair it is.” He sighs. “My vice became Plasmius.”

 

“You  _ are _ Plasmius,” Jazz points out, distrust burning in her throat. This isn’t right, and it spins in her brain like a hurricane. “It’s like a drug,” she finds herself saying. “You know it’s wrong. You know it’s bad, and it’s hurting the people around you. But you just can’t stop chasing the high… it hurts to stop, doesn’t it?” 

 

She watches the old man flinch at her words, but Jazz just can’t bring herself to stop. Something angry and pitying and disgusted is growing in the pit of her belly, and it needs to be let out. “Detoxing is painful and slow. It’s much easier to just up your dosage and get a little more buzz. Plasmius allows an enhanced synergy: a mask to hide behind and the power to do what you want.”

 

Vlad just nods dejectedly. “Seems so.”

 

“Power, though. Power corrupts.” Jazz declares, and Vlad looks so profoundly defeated that she can see tears clinging to his eyelashes, pooling in the crease of his pulled-back lips as they flee his eyes. He makes no sound or breath to otherwise indicate his upset.

 

“Don’t forget your family when you’re off being a brilliant neurologist and an even better psychologist.” The compliment is genuine, but his voice sounds dead and exhausted. She just nods numbly, reaching gently up to lattice their fingers together once more.

 

But that can’t be it. He told her that she doesn’t understand, given her that horrible, terrified look, as though coming to an epiphany himself. “But what don’t I understand?” Jazz isn’t quite sure she really wants to know.

 

Vlad closes his eyes, tipping his head back against the sofa. “Stupid brilliant girl,” he mumbles. “Vices are punishments because they are the things we don’t want to  _ want. _ ”

 

“So… you’re saying that on some level, Danny  _ wants _ to pull a Swift Runner? A Donner pass? To kill people?” Unspoken:  _ eat people _ ?

 

He shrugs. “I doubt literally. But think about it. With all he does, he’s still tormented at school. His parents love him but they still neglect him. Daniel is a good young man, but I don’t think he would be  _ completely  _ devoid of bitterness after that.” Vlad sighs, looking away to trace the patterns of the carpet with his eyes. 

 

“You’re saying he wants revenge.”

 

“Who doesn’t?”

 

The ringing of the landline breaks the spell, and Jazz hops up from the sofa. Vlad’s cool fingers linger for a moment in the empty air, curled slightly as though still wrapped around her hand. “I got it,” Jazz says, a little evasively.” She moves over to the phone on the side table with long strides, leaning against the wall as she picks it up and tucks it against her ear.

 

“Tucker?” She asks. Her gut is filled with leaden dry ice as she hears the boy’s frantic low voice on the other end of the line, filtering tinnily through the receiver. The world is lurching beneath Jazz, and she sways against the wall.

 

“Danny is at my place,” the boy explains. “But he isn’t doing too good.” The words are like water in her ears, unfocused and muffled. 

 

“I’m… god. I’m really sorry,” Tuck chokes over the phone. “He tried to off himself in my bathroom.” Jazz can hear him faintly crying, and feels her breath hitch.

 

She can’t keep the tremor from her voice when asking, “Is he-”

 

“Fine,” Tucker interrupts. “He’s okay. I c-caught him before he could do anything… permanent, I guess. Cried himself to sleep. He’s here, in my bed. Okay. For now.”

 

Her brain is processing the information, but she isn’t hearing what’s being said beyond that. Thank goodness Danny is okay-- oh, but not. He’s not ready to come home, especially not with Vlad still here, still wounded. He’s too mentally and emotionally fragile for that. Oh  _ God _ . Jazz doesn’t pray often, but she can’t help but beg to the sky that everything will be okay. “Okay,” she croaks, blinking away tears that roll down her cheeks anyway. “Thank you for calling. Keep him there. I’ll try and get things sorted out over here. Thank you. Tell him I love him.”

 

Tucker is halfway through his faintly staticky affirmative when Jazz hangs up, hands shaking.

 

“Is everything alright?” Vlad probes, leaning towards her with brows furrowed and mouth slightly parted, voice thick with concern. “Jasmine?”

 

Jazz almost can’t bring herself to speak. Almost. She blinks away the tears still clinging to her eyelashes, hands let limp at her sides.

 

“Danny tried to kill himself tonight.”


	22. Dog Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tucker and Danny hang out during a heat wave.

Tucker’s thumbs moved absently over the surface of his phone, picking at the loose rubber grooves in its case. Sam was off somewhere up north, a mandatory rich snob boot-camp courtesy of her overbearing parents. He sympathized, but not enough to argue-- her parents only wanted what was best for her, even if they did a shitty job of showing it.

 

Today was not quite so suffocatingly hot and humid as the past week had been, so Tucker took it upon himself to organize a meetup with Danny. The summer had been hard on him so far: a cold core in boiling weather left him in a constant state of irritability and discomfort. 

 

He’d cooped himself up down in the lab where it was cool and full of metal, leaning against the frame of the ghost portal with eyes closed. Jazz said in an email that he did it for hours, sometimes, soaking up the ghostly cold like a supernatural alternative to sticking your head in front of an electric fan in a desperate attempt to not melt.

 

But today was moderately cool and breezy. Danny said he was a in a good mood over the phone, and sounded peppy enough. Tucker offered to meet at Fentonworks so they could cut through the park on the way to the air-conditioned haven of the Nasty Burger. It was a good plan, it would be a good day.

 

Tucker was standing in front of the door, one fist raised to knock. He rapped in a playful pattern and waited. The front stoop was mercifully cast in shade by the OPs Center upstairs, but he could still feel sweat pooling at his collar. Maybe those plans could use an amendment-- a trip to the pool was certainly still on the table.

 

Jazz opened the door, looking frazzled. Her orange hair was bunched into a sloppy bun at the back of her head, and hot flush blotted out her freckles. She looked hopelessly tired, and had clearly not really gotten out of bed at all today. She slouched in the doorway, still braless while wearing a tank top and borrowed NASA-print boxers to serve as shorts.

 

“You look like you got hit by a bus,” Tucker observed. Jazz barely had the energy to roll her eyes.

 

“Just get in here, good luck with Danny.”

 

The Fentons’ house was stiflingly hot, and Tucker immediately wilted in the heat. “Oh, dude,” he wrinkled his nose in distaste, “do you guys even have air conditioning?”

 

Jazz pointed to a stuttering electric fan on the windowsill. Even Maddie and Jack had shed their usual choice of clothing. Jack was stretched limply across the sofa in a sweaty tank, Maddie wearing hot pink shorts and fanning herself with a magazine in the loveseat.

 

“Hi, sweetie,” Mrs. Fenton breathed, throwing one arm dramatically over her face. “Go on without us.”

 

Tuck withheld a snigger at that, waving hello. “Danny’s in the lab, right?”

 

A terse nod was the only response he was getting as the Fentons returned to their lethargy. He wandered into the kitchen, still sweating, and shouldered open the heavy metal door to the lab. The metal was mercifully cool against his arm. Pleasantly cold air rushed to meet him as he trudged down the stairs.

 

Danny was flat on his back in the middle of the panelled metal floor. Of all the people Tucker expected to be wearing a crop-top, his best friend was not on the list. This one was dark colored-- probably borrowed (stolen) from Sam. He looked suspiciously like a fried egg, spread across the floor in a simmering puddle of despair.

 

Tucker snapped a picture. How could he possibly resist such a brilliant opportunity for blackmail? The digital shutter clicked and his cover was blown.

 

“Hey,” Danny rasped with a half-smirk. “Welcome to paradise, Tuck.”

 

“Really,” he agreed. “Why isn’t your family down here? It’s much cooler. I think your father is actually dying.”

 

A weird, full-body shrug as Danny sat slowly up. Tucker could hear vertebra pop as he stretched, peeling himself off the floor. “Something about overheating radioactive materials or something.” He waved a flippant hand. “S’no big deal.”

 

Tucker wished he could be so dismissive of potential death. He supposed the fear disappeared when you’d already done it once.

 

“Why are they letting you down here?”

 

Danny grinned sheepishly, but that sly edge that he only ever wore as Phantom slipped through the cracks. “Nothing’s blown up yet. They think I’m tinkering and they were too excited that I showed interest to keep me upstairs. They’ve never really been too severe on safety measures.”

 

He barked out a laugh. “ _ Dude _ .” Tucker sighed, grabbing his friend firmly by the wrist to help him stand. “Any brilliant ideas yet?”

 

“Yes, actually.” Danny’s face did  _ That Thing _ where his brows would push together and his lip would catch between his teeth, nose wrinkled and eyes focused on something far away. He made that face a lot when he was thinking. “Yeah,” he said again, more confidently. “I think we can make a bottomless thermos!”

 

Tuck cocked his head at that. “Really? How?”

 

So Danny began with more gusto than his best friend had anticipated. “My mom made a blaster that generates miniature ghost-portals, localized. They’re not stable like the one down here because of how they’re made, but it’s not dangerous. I just need to set it up so that the thermos trigger could link to the generation mechanism inside the thermos,” he explained, eyes bright. “And then sucking baddies into the thermos would send ‘em straight to the ghost zone! No basement raids necessary.”

 

Tucker blinked. That was actually… a really good idea. “How’re we gonna make it?”

 

“Great!” The halfa laughed lightly. “I lied when I said the lab trips were done-- we’ll need to pick up spare parts. It’ll take some fiddling but I’m certain we can make this work!”

 

He grinned. “Awesome, dude! Can I see your mom’s portal gun? I bet if I got a look at it we could replicate it thermos-sized.”

 

Danny nodded vigorously. “Yeah,” he agreed, pointing to a rack of weapons on the far side of the lab. “It’s over there. With the segmented barrel.”

 

Tucker reached for the biggest gun on the rack, but Danny stopped him. “No,” he said, a little urgently. “That’s a  _ real _ bazooka. It’ll explode. The portal one has a scope and a square body.”

 

“This one?” asked Tucker, pointing to a similar weapon two rows down.

 

“That one,” the halfa finally agreed, folding his legs beneath him and beginning to pick at a thermos.

 

Danny always acted like he was totally disinterested in his parents’ work, but watching him gut the device made Tucker think otherwise. His slender fingers moved deftly between delicate parts, extracting mechanism after mechanism with professional ease. 

 

Tucker himself bent over the portal-bazooka. The boxy segment nearest the butt of the weapon seemed to house the portal generator-- a mass of composite wiring and ecto-fuel cells that fed into a hollow metal cylinder to serve as the portal’s throat. He grinned-- it was complex, but spending nearly all his time with the Fentons had its perks. He carefully catalogued each part, inputting numbers into his phone.

 

“Know where I can get spare parts?” He asked.

 

“Yup,” Danny said. He placed his thermos down, bunching his legs beneath him to stand. Stepping carefully over his neat rows of extricated parts, he crossed the lab and disappeared into a closet. Danny emerged perhaps two minutes later, a thick plastic bin full of gleaming metal hoisted in his arms. “Good?”

 

That was a fourteen-gallon storage bin full of steel alloy and heavy fuel. The halfa grinned toothily at his best friend, setting the container down between their makeshift workstations. Tuck couldn’t help but gape, but Danny didn’t seem to notice.

 

Almost immediately, he dove headfirst into the writhing mass of cables and modules, picking through for the ones he most needed. At the same time, Danny returned to his meticulous deconstruction of the thermos, delicately relocating soldered wires and tiny screws.

 

“What’s the verdict?” Tucker asked, dropping a smallish fuel cell into his quickly-growing pile of building materials.

 

Danny shrugged without looking up. “The triggering mechanism is  _ way _ more complicated than it needs to be, but that’s kind of what I expected. It shouldn’t be too hard to rewire it and hook up to the portal generator. How’s that coming?”

 

“Not bad,” Tuck replied. “It’s pretty compact, so we should be able to fit everything in the bottom of the thermos with some room left over.” He caught Danny’s attention, and gestured with his hands to indicate the approximate size. “Like this, yeah? I figure if they’re gonna get sent right to the ghost zone it won’t really matter how much room there is the actual thermos as long as it’s got all the parts.”

 

He picked at some of the wires, unravelling neat bundles of copper connections and laying them out flat. The generator itself was already fairly compact, so it didn’t seem like too much trouble to bypass some of the needless complication typical of Fenton devices. Tucker bunched his nose in distaste at the sloppy configuration. 

 

All it would really need was the liquid ectoplasm serving as a power source to flow through miniature conduits and collect in a small basin within the device. From there it would hyper-crystallize, and then receive the correct electrical stimuli to prompt the opening of an artificial portal through the ecto-quartz. 

 

That was to say, not all  _ this _ nonsense with adapters and side channels and useless refraction devices to contain the portal and potentially deadly ghost-zone atmosphere. Tucker knew for a fact that portals were self-contained and the air was perfectly safe, at least in the short term, so there was really no reason for any of this.

 

Danny made a soft humming sound, and Tuck couldn’t help but to look up. His cheeks were flushed that odd green-brown color of mixed blood and ghostly ichor from the heat, bangs stiff with sweat and dampened into little curls that bounced as he nodded to himself. He smiled then, gasping with a soft epiphany that made a little piece of Tucker melt. The halfa probed the gutted thermos and had at it with a screwdriver, slim fingers flying as he cobbled together enough parts to create a grounding base for the portal generator.

 

Tucker forced down the burning in his cheeks, a sting that he knew wasn’t due to the sweltering outside heat. He shook himself out, determined to get back to work on the actual generator they needed. It was really a simple matter of plugging and chugging, as it were, but his brain felt scrambled and his face wouldn’t cool off. He wished Danny wasn’t so oblivious sometimes.

 

“I think the generator’s done,” he said, a little hoarsely. Danny looked up, grinning wide enough to showcase his little dimples and push his freckles up into his eyes.

 

“Awesome!” He cried, springing to his feet. “Let’s test it out.” Danny paced awkwardly over the sea of discarded mechanical parts, coming up behind Tucker to put a firm cool hand on his shoulder in reassurance. “Don’t worry,” Danny soothed, smirking ever-wider. “You’re a total whizz, Tuck: it’ll work just fine!”

 

Tucker, for his part, wasn’t so sure. He worried his lip as the final parts settled into place, grabbing the compacted gadget and aiming it at the wall. He pressed the trigger button and tensed as the basin lit up with green.

 

Danny’s eyes followed the little arcs of green electricity leaping from the conduits. He cocked his head to one side, brows arched and eyes running wide. “Huh,” he said simply, watching in fascination as the generator whirred. “There it is…”

 

Tuck leaned in alongside him, marvelling as the gelatinous ectoplasm hardened into a faceted green disk inside the throat of the mini-portal. Danny tapped him on the shoulder, tugging at Tucker’s collar to take a step back. He obliged with minimal reluctance as the green glow flared and a tiny, self-contained portal exploded into existence at the mouth of the generator.

 

Huh. Sweet. He was so focused on the hypnotic green swirls of the portal that he didn’t see Danny leaning in until it was too late: their noses smacked awkwardly together as Tucker turned his head, leaving Danny to laugh and grin devilishly as he pulled his best friend in close. Their sweaty chests were pressed together, Danny’s cool skin like heaven on Tucker’s heat-stricken frame.

 

His lips tasted like citrus ice pops and cool mint when they locked with Tucker’s, and he decided that Danny wasn’t oblivious at all. The slimy bastard, getting Tucker to do his dirty work- but then again, Tuck thought as Danny’s cool hands slid up under his shirt, the payment sure was good.


	23. Momma's Boy Part V: Jack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time: Vlad is taken back to Fentonworks and left home alone with Jazz: she needs answers.  
> This time: Floundering helplessly against his uncontrolled emotions, Jack confesses his hunch to Vlad and Jazz, who have some confessions of their own.
> 
> CW: mild violence/gore, referenced self harm/suicide

Jack watches the tea steep with unfocused eyes. He knows his huge hands are shaking beyond his control as he grips the countertop. Oh, god. He’s totally screwed up. Again. Vlad is hurt, Danny’s missing: would this have happened if he had just confronted his son when he first thought he knew?

 

Maddie comes resignedly into the kitchen just behind him, taking long, slow strides. “Don’t go back out there,” she commands meekly. “They need to talk and I think Jazz is getting him calm better than we could.” Her voice is low and weary, and Jack can see the faint sheen of sweat and tears that glistens greasily on her reddened cheeks. She is flushed from emotion and exertion over the bridge of her nose, but the rest of her face seems sickly pale.

 

“You okay, Mads?” Jack asks. He presses one hand firmly on the small of her back, rubbing soothingly as she leans against the cold kitchen counter. It’s a stupid question to ask, he knows, but it makes a selfish little part of him feel better, and listening for her answer serves well enough to distract him from his own treacherous thoughts.

 

She nods hesitantly, stiffly. Even Jack can tell that she doesn’t really mean it, but he nods along anyway. “I’ll live,” she says hoarsely. “But not if we just stay here and do nothing.”

 

Oh. “What will we do?” He raises, knowing the answer in the back of his mind. Jack swallows thickly past the lump in his throat, a cold pill of guilt catching hard on its way down. This is bad. So bad. What can he possibly do to make things better? Nothing, probably. The worried culpability runs circles in his head.

 

“We’re going to find Danny,” Maddie declares, steel in her voice even as it wavers. Her hands shake with rage, anger he can see flickering in her deep blue eyes and spoken of in her hard-set jaw. “And we’re going to destroy the monster ghost that did this to him and Vlad and me.”

 

A protest dies in his throat as fresh hot tears spill from Maddie’s wide, red-rimmed eyes. They crawl along the curve of her cheek and drip down to roll off her newly donned jumpsuit. “Are you sure that’s what we need?” Jack asks meekly. “We probably shouldn’t leave Jazz and Vladdie alone…” He allows himself to trail off, quailing under his wife’s searching gaze.

 

Her expression softens a fraction, and she wipes her eyes on her clean blue sleeve. “Are you okay, Jack? You’d usually be all over this.”

 

Part of him is a little offended that she is approaching him as though he is so impregnably single-minded, but then again he probably overdid it a little on the acting before. It’s easy to get into it and work with it as a force of habit: he’s a ghost hunter, and heck if he isn’t _actually_ excited about finding and studying ghosts. What about their language? Their social order? Is there a culture? What is it like?

 

That innocent wondering feels like ash in his mouth, as it were. Jack’s own son is missing and his best friend since college is barely alive on the living room sofa right now. His daughter is probably traumatized from seeing all the blood and goodness knows what might have happened to Danny if Vlad is so torn up. He knows that Danny is strong, maybe inhumanly so if his current hunch has anything to say about it, so what possibly could have happened? Phantom rarely ever let humans in the vicinity of a battle get hurt, so if whatever he had fought could get so badly at Vladdie… what had happened to the infamous Danny Phantom?

 

Maddie's heavy sigh shakes him from his thoughts. “Jack? Are you okay?” She asks again, this time more concerned. One hand is hovering over his arm, delicate fingers ghosting over his clothes in a vaguely soothing gesture.

 

“Fine, sorry.” He drags his fingers down over his face, pinching the bridge of his nose with a huff. “I’m just worried. This isn’t exactly a routine occurrence.”

 

“I’m worried too. Danny will be okay,” Maddie assures lowly. She treads lightly, seeming to notice the bitterness in his explanation, but the deliberate way in which she speaks just makes Jack feel sicker. “But we need to find him before we can help him.”

 

Nodding, Jack acquiesces. “Yeah, maybe. I just think it might be better to look after Jazz and Vladdie right now.”

 

Maddie doesn’t listen, and bulldozes right over his meek protest. He follows her out to the GAV, a stun-blaster clutched low against his belly. She has an electrified net launcher and a bazooka and a burn laser. Briefly, Jack wonders if it might be better to confess his theory _before_ they go out and potentially hunt down their own son, but the fear crawling in his gut stops him. What if he’s wrong? What if it’s a trick?

 

There are too many unreliable variables, he decides, clinging to his inner scientist in a vain attempt to rationalize. He has no real way of knowing if Danny is actually the enigmatic Phantom, and honestly the more he turns it over in his head the more ridiculous it sounds. Nevermind the Phantom’s inexplicable possession and knowledge of Fenton devices- they give precautionary anti-ghost things out to plenty of Amity Park’s citizens, don’t they? -A ghost _and_ a human? That’s impossible, even laughable. Right?

 

Something dark plays hopscotch down his spine, and he shivers as he steps into the RV passenger side. Maddie vaults up into the driver’s seat, slamming the door hard and starting the vehicle. He stares blankly off onto the road, tracing the thin yellow lines with his eyes as they flash in the hot beam of the headlights. What if he’s _not_ a human and a ghost? Danny has always been terrified of ghosts. If something had happened to get him involved, he would surely tell his parents, right? What if he’s _just_ a ghost now?

 

It’s definitely possible, Jack realizes with horror. There was supposedly a woman-ghost posing as a high school psychiatrist, ‘counseling the kids and feeding on their abject teen misery, siphoning their life force bit by bit. No one had even known the difference until she tried to off one of the students. Jack has never actually found out who the woman-ghost had targeted, but the knowledge that this ghost _can_ pretend sets his breath hitching, blood boiling.

 

Danny has acted strange ever since he allegedly got shocked by the portal in September of last year. It was a bad electrocution that scarred him and scrambled parts of his brain, but he was _okay_ , or so the doctors said. But if it was something a normal doctor can’t see…

 

Sudden secretive behavior? Check. He slinks evasively around questions with expert finesse, and cuts school almost daily now, as though he had suddenly just stopped caring. Jack knows he lies. He does it all the time, even about seemingly little things. He looks on with visible distaste as his parents talk about their research. Some of their more destructive ghost hunting equipment was mysteriously disabled or outright destroyed overnight-- has that been Danny? Or, Jack supposes, _not_?

 

So has it not been Danny at all since the accident? Has it been only a changeling in disguise, playing masquerade games with them, posing as their son? Maybe... but what about all the little things that are _so_ Danny? How he wrinkles his nose at the smell of Jack’s toast in the morning, and guzzles coffee like water. The way his lips push up on his cheeks and crinkle under his eyes when he laughs at stupidly obscure jokes made by his friends, or the pure wonder in his gaze as he stares up at the constellations from the OPs Center?

 

Jack refuses to believe that this past year and a half has been nothing but a lie. A ghost would have had to sit in on Danny’s life for several years, or more, to have mastered those kinds of personal nuances. It had to have sat in on Danny’s _entire_ life. Maybe he’s being hopelessly optimistic, but it just doesn’t feel right to simply give up on his son. Since when does a Fenton ever?

 

They drive in aimless, careless circles, haphazardly swerving around corners and ducking into back alleys so narrow that the plated sides of the GAV sand a fine layer of concrete and brick-dust from the buildings they pass. As the night wears on, Maddie grows increasingly desperate and erratic in her driving until Jack, of all people, finally takes it upon himself to stop her and escort them both out of the vehicle.

 

“Maddie, sweetie.” He can feel the tremble in his own voice; it vibrates and crackles piteously in his throat, but he goes on despite it. “I don’t think we’ll be able to find him tonight.”

 

His wife looks crushed. Sweat has twisted her hair into stiff, salty curls, her eyes are pink and puffy from crying, and a thin grey trail of washed-out mascara paints wavering lines down her cheeks. She holds her hands close to her body, as though protecting herself, and despite her best attempts to hide it Jack can see the stiffness in her wrists: she has gripped the steering wheel so tight for so long her hands are starting to cramp up.

 

“Why would you say that?” She asks, and it is a demand. Her voice is low and shaking but it is woven with steel and fire. “We’re _going_ to find Danny! We can’t just _give up_!”

 

Jack feels the corner of his mouth twitch at the small irony. “No,” he soothes. “But you won’t do our boy any good if you’re exhausted and confused. We should go home and get some sleep, and then we can start searching again first thing in the morning, when we’re fresh and we have a plan.” Maddie opens her mouth as though to protest, but Jack cuts her off before she can start again. “Besides,” he reasons. “I’m sure Jazz needs us now, too, and we need to take care of Vladdie. He was there before you were, so maybe he can tell us about what happened on his end.”

 

Maddie visibly wilts at the mention of their daughter, the fervor in her eyes smothered beneath lids hooded with exhaustion. She lets her shoulders slump, leaning heavily against Jack’s chest. He sighs and leans into the hug, wrapping his big meaty arms around his wife’s tiny frame as her narrow shoulders shake with sobs.

 

She whimpers and gasps beneath his grip. He can feel the staccato huffs of her weeping breaths against his chest, the tension in his clothes where her delicate fingers curl like claws against him. He swallows his own quiet sob, blinking back a rush of vision-clouding tears.

 

“Let’s go, hon,” he all but whispers, gently nudging his wife aside and herding her back into the GAV. This time she slides into the passenger seat, slowly closing the door as though it might shatter beneath her touch. She tucks her long legs against herself, feet up on the seat and shins pressed awkwardly against the dashboard as she tries her hardest to curl into herself.

 

Jack sighs deeply, easing into the driver’s side and shutting the door. He starts the van with a half-hearted wrench of the key. The engine turns over with a despondent sort of grumble, as though it shares their grief. It hums quietly as they drive home. Jack doesn’t think he has ever driven so slowly and so carefully, rounding each turn with utmost care. He shoots little furtive glances at his wife every so often, listening to the bass of the engine and the soft rhythm of Maddie’s sniffles. He adds his own quiet sighs to the beat, tapping his gloved fingers against the steering wheel as they drive in halfway-soothing circles.

 

He really wants to tell her. What if his theory is correct? She really deserves to know, anyway. “I think…” Jack breathes, sighing hard through his nose. “I just wonder if Danny told us everything about the accident in the basement.”

 

Maddie looks up, peering over her knees with wide teary eyes. “What do you mean, Jackie?” Her voice is low and hoarse, but hopeful.

 

“Well… remember how after his accident in college, Vladdie… well, I guess he just _changed_? Got angrier. Pushed everyone away, all that.” She nods, and Jack continues hesitantly. “I just wonder if that had anything to do with the accident itself as opposed to the hospital time in isolation.”

 

He turns to see his wife’s indigo-blue eyes narrow just a fraction. “Yes… Do I want- do I want to know why you’re asking?”

 

Jack nods, still unsure. “The same thing happened to Danny, sort of. He’s gotten… more rebellious, I suppose. Maybe it’s not just a teenage phase…” He takes a breath, feeling it hitch harshly in his chest. “Maybe Danny got changed in the same… way-”

 

And it all comes crashing down on him. It takes every ounce of self-control not to floor it right back to Fentonworks that very moment, and Jack can feel the sweat beading on his brow. Instead, he spins the steering wheel, urging the GAV into a steep, sweeping turn back onto the main road. “Nevermind that now, Maddie. Didn’t you say you saw the Wisconsin Ghost up at Vladdie’s place?” His voice comes out quiet and warbling and foreign, even to his own ears. He presses down just a little harder on the gas, clinging to the epiphany that’s still rattling in his brain like an alarm bell.

 

“Yes,” Maddie ventures, brows pinched into a thin frown above her nose. “Why?”

 

“I wanted to be sure,” he replies shakily, easing up as they approach an empty intersection. He runs a red light, but there is no one else there, so it doesn’t really matter. Jack just doesn’t want to spook his wife any further. “You think Wisconsin,” he manages, then stops to swallow past the lump in his throat. “You think it overshadowed Danny or-”

 

She shakes her head, sweat-stiff curls bouncing with her movements. “No,” Maddie replies, voice wavering. “It was the Phantom, I th- no, no, that’s not right- I’m sure of it.” She pauses to take a deep breath, and Jack can see her grip tighten around her knees. “It tried to convince me that it was Danny,” she explains, voice breaking on the second syllable of their son’s name. Jack blinks wetness away from his eyes, watching as his wife scrubs at her own in the seat next to him. “But I saw; his eyes were glowing green.” She chokes on that last phrase, sobs shooting up from her throat. “It used Danny to- oh, Jack- it was _awful_.”

 

Horror just pools in Jack’s gut as he takes it all in. Phantom went after Wisconsin-- Vladdie is in tatters and Danny is missing… as much as he tries to rationalize a way out of it, the evidence is overwhelming. A lump of ice settles in his throat, making it hurt to speak.

 

“Don’t describe it,” he says, as soothingly as he possibly can- which is likely not very. “Don’t think about it. Don’t worry. We’ll get this all taken care of.”

 

“I couldn’t even if I tried,” Maddie all but whispers, and then goes silent.

 

Jack sighs heavily as they come to a stop in front of Fentonworks. “Maybe,” he concedes, a little dejectedly, “but I understand. It’s hard. I haven’t seen what you’ve seen.” He lets the engine fall silent and pulls the keys from the GAV. “Now I want you to go upstairs, get changed, and go to bed.” He raises one meaty finger to her lips when she opens her mouth to protest. “No ifs, ands, or buts about it. You need to rest. I’ll look after Vladdie and Jazz until the morning- it’s only a few hours anyway.”

 

Maddie stares up at him with those glistening blue eyes, and Jack feels himself melt, just a little. “Are you sure?” She asks, and it comes out soft and warbling and deeply vulnerable. He almost caves right then and there. Almost.

 

“Yes,” he insists, dropping one hand to gently squeeze her shoulder as he ushers his wife across the sidewalk. Ever so gently, he corrals her over the front stoop and into the house, shutting the door as quietly as he can behind them. “Now please, go to sleep.”

 

In the sagging of her shoulders and lowering of her gaze, Jack can tell that he has won, at least for now. He casts only a cursory glance to Vlad and Jazz, who are sitting in silent company. It would be a comforting sight were it not for the stricken pallid tone of Vlad’s face, and the still-wet tear tracks that shine on Jazz’s ruddy cheeks.

 

Despite the urge to go and see what’s wrong, Jack knows that Maddie wouldn’t be ready for his hypothesis: she’s fragile enough as is. So he helps her up the stairs and all but tucks her into bed, closing the door quietly behind him as he leaves. He can hear her moving in the room as soon as the door is shut, and the distinct creaky sound of the old rubber lining as she opens the window, the muted grunts as she lowers herself outside. She’s more than likely heading out to look some more, but in his heart Jack knows better than to try to stop her. He lets loose a resigned sigh and turns away from the closed bedroom door.

 

On the way downstairs he notices that Vlad’s spindly fingers are entangled in Jazz’s mess of frizzy orange hair. He strokes her head as she cries, never once foregoing that awful agonized look on his face. His brows are pulled into a tight frown above his nose, lips pressed in a thin line, stormy grey eyes glittering with unshed moisture.

 

They know something.

 

“What happened?” Jack asks, looking Vlad right in the eye. He knows that they’ve been on less than stellar terms as of late, and Vlad especially has let his isolation fester, but the silent pleading in the other man’s eyes is almost enough to make Jack simply turn around and leave. He doesn’t.

 

“I- we don’t- we know no more than you do, Jack.” Vlad’s voice is hoarse and afraid, dripping with a helpless sort of disquiet that sets Jack on edge. There is none of the usual unveiled disdain, only desperation, and fear.

 

He sighs and lowers himself into the armchair across from the sofa. Jazz follows his movement from behind a curtain of sweaty hair, tucking her legs defensively closer to her on the couch beside Vlad. She knows something, he can tell. So does he.

 

They know something. Is it the same thing Jack thinks he knows?

 

Only one way to find out. “Danny is the Phantom,” he says dully. Jack feels very, very stupid saying this, and very, very tired, but his audience rewards his exhaustion. Jazz’s flushed, slack-jawed reaction would be more than enough confirmation, but the look of utterly defeated resignation melting onto Vlad’s face is the last nail in the coffin.

 

Huh. “Danny is the Phantom,” he repeats numbly, and the words just sound so ludicrous to his own ears. He almost wants to smile about how insane it all is, but Jack finds he hasn’t the energy to even start. Fresh tears spill from Jazz’s wide green eyes. “Am I right?”

 

Silence reigns, oppressive and pregnant as Jack waits for a response-- ideally from both, but honestly a response at all would be cause for celebration in his book.

 

“How long have you known?” Jazz finally croaks.

 

Jack just shrugs. “Since- well, I’d had a hunch for a little while. Didn’t _know_ till just now.” He bends over in his chair, pressing at his temples in a vain attempt to ease the throbbing headache that’s growing there. A humorless laugh escapes him, and such a sound feels alien and cold even to his own ears. “Sure explains a lot.”

 

Vlad leans over, swaying unsteadily, to put one hand on Jack’s shoulder, shaky but firm and cool. _Cool._ Insufficient warmth and discoloration in the extremities can be attributed to blood loss in large quantities, but not real _cold_. As far as ghosts went Vlad would be far beyond hyperthermia, but a human would be comatose on ice at least to be at a temperature like that.

 

But what about something that was _both_?

 

“I should have known,” Jack finally chokes. It’s not until he tries to look up at his daughter that he realizes his vision is a tearful blur of watercolor shapes. He blinks and they roll down his cheeks, and he is not ashamed to cry. “Two portal accidents,” he says. “Two weird ghosts.”

 

Vlad stiffens at that, eyes wide. His expression is one of almost comical horror, face twisted into a terrified mask of guilt and regret.

 

It’s just like him to act so dramatic, Jack thinks. “I don’t hate you,” he says. “I don’t blame you.” His legs feel weak and his brain is about as useful as cold oatmeal sloshing around in his skull at this point. He doesn’t really feel _sad_ , per se, but the tears won’t stop coming and his body won’t stop shaking long enough for him to stand. Each breath comes in a wet gasp between the sobs so he can’t even collect himself, just cry helplessly into his hands while his daughter and his oldest friend look on.

 

“What,” Vlad says flatly; it isn’t a question, rather an expression of dumbfounded disbelief.

 

Jazz cuts in from there. “What about mom?” She asks, wringing her hands. There is intensity in her sea-green eyes that belies her bedraggled appearance.

 

“Outside,” Jack replies. “I tried to get her to sleep, but I heard her going out the window once I closed the door. She doesn’t know.”

 

“Oh,” says Vlad, brow furrowed. “Huh.” He turns to Jazz without missing a beat, mouth pulled into a pinched little frown. “Daniel was at the Foleys’ last we heard, correct?” She nods at him, shooting a nervous glance towards Jack and blinking away fresh moisture from her eyes. “It’s good that we know that…”

 

Hope plucks at Jack’s chest, hitching his breath as he asks, “So we could go save him? Bring him back safe?”

 

Jazz and Vlad exchange looks, and Vlad puts one hand across his chest against his wounded shoulder. “I’m not sure if that’s a good idea, dad. He tried-” She cuts herself off, shrinking a little in her seat. “He almost died. Danny’s not in a good way right now, and uh-”

 

Oh. Realization swells painfully in his chest until Jack can barely breathe. “Oh, no,” he huffs. “Poor Danny must be so scared of us- his _parents_!” Panic constricts his throat so the words come out small and choked. “He has to- he must hate us.”

 

“No,” Vlad says forcefully, squeezing hard on Jack’s hand. “Absolutely not.” His expression softens a little as he continues. “Daniel loves both you and Madeline very, very deeply. All he wants is to protect you.” He scoffs a little at that. “Quite frankly it’s a little obnoxious.”

 

Jack says nothing in response, wiping listlessly at his eyes. He knows that Danny loves him, more than anything else. It’s really the only thing he’s sure of at this point- perhaps except the burning hurt in his chest.

 

“What about the mayor?” He finally asks.

 

“Framed,” says Jazz.

 

He nods,”And the banks?”

 

“Hypnotised. He couldn’t help it, and his friends couldn’t stop him on their own. I thought about getting you and mom involved, but…” She trails off, wringing her hands.

Neither of his children felt safe enough in their own home to trust him or Maddie with this overwhelming secret, and the part that hurts the most is that they were right in doing so. They’re _right_ . Jack wouldn’t trust himself either, and he especially wouldn’t trust Maddie to reign in her first impulse of shooting at the ‘ghost.’ What kind of parent _is_ he to inspire such terror in his own children? Jack feels sick.

 

It’s not like the kids have never given any indication. Jazz is perpetually advocating for the Phantom, to give him the benefit of the doubt, and while Danny has always been less vocal, he too insists that not all ghosts are bad. What did Jack and Maddie do? They just brushed off their own children’s increasingly fervent claims that they were wrong, that things were different.

 

And they were right about that, too, Jack thinks miserably. He and Maddie are supposed to be scientists, yet they utterly abandoned the method when results didn't align with their preconceptions and expectations. Unintentionally or not, they destroyed their son's life over a stupid theory in a stupid goddamned notebook from their college days

 

“I can’t believe this,” he whispers, and doesn’t believe his own words. What a fool he’s been, an idiot. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, it seems, because everything is so clear in retrospect. He can see it all laid out, all the times he's turned the other cheek with denial roaring in his ears, all the times he's turned a blind eye and ignored things when he knows they're wrong because he was too much of a damn coward to face the truth. “God, what have we done?”

 

He feels sick. Jack can see the lines of puckered scar tissue where the neckline of Vlad’s oversized tee slips down, the fresh bruises in ugly shades of yellow and blue, the deep furrows drawn clearly by desperate fingers-- and all he can think of is that he is the reason for it. He drove his son to this, his own child. Jack’s inaction is chronicled in the half-moon canyon of missing flesh and hindbrain scarring on his old friend- now a stranger’s skin.

 

_He did this._

 

“I’m sorry we didn’t tell you,” Jazz finally murmurs, brushing wavy strands of fire-orange hair from her eyes, which are red and puffy from crying. “We were afraid.”

 

Jack nods, wiping his own eyes. The tears blur his vision even as he blinks them away, and they roll hot down his cheeks, burning with shame as Jazz leans forward, arms outstretched. “I know. I know.” He chokes on that, swallowing a fresh sob. “I know, baby.”

 

He takes his daughter into his arms, kissing her frazzled orange bedhead and stroking her back in soothing circles. Jack slips off one of his gloves, brushing warm tears from her cheeks with the bare pad of his thumb. He holds her close and tight, irrationally fearing that if he lets go she might just float away, like a ghost.

 

Jazz is his world in that moment. His stomach flips as she draws away, but she only swipes his tears away with her delicate fingers, so much like Maddie’s, and gives him a sad, sad smile. She looks just like her mother, with a smattering of freckles blotted out by flush, striking green eyes full of grief and compassion. “It’s okay, dad.”

 

The similarities end there. Even through her tears, Jazz’s voice is level. There is hope flickering in her expression, in the twitch of her mouth and the glint in her eyes. Maddie is wild and desperate, impossible to control. With great regret Jack realizes that she is the greatest danger to her own son rather than any wayward ghost.

 

“I love you, Jazzy-pants,” Jack mumbles.

 

“Love you too,” Jazz replies, wiping at her own eyes.

 

Jack is almost ready to drop the conversation and rest in silent company, but something bothers him, and he voices as much. “What I still don’t understand,” he cautions between sniffles, “is what exactly happened between Danny and you, Vlad.” He meets the halfa’s wavering gaze, brows furrowed. “You went through the same thing, so I imagine you’d be close- why did he…” Jack gestures vaguely before deciding hesitantly on a phrasing, “go after you?”

 

Vlad and Jazz exchange nervous glances; Jazz nods curtly, sighing almost inaudibly through her teeth.

 

“That’s true,” Vlad concedes awkwardly, “but I’m afraid most of my interactions with Daniel were rather antagonistic on my part.” He must notice the undisguised horror dawning on Jack’s face, because he quickly adds, “This-” and gestures to his injury, “is by no means the norm. It’s usually just pranks, like turning shower walls invisible, or running for mayor- Something… something went very, very wrong this time. He'd mentioned being hungry- but I just made fun of him. I didn't think it would turn out like this...”

 

Jazz nods. “I’ll say,” she agrees, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Danny’s been... taking care of... himself…” She stops to nervously wet her lips, throwing an anxious look Jack’s way. “He’s been managing it pretty much since this whole thing started with minimal help. After what happened the last time he slipped up, it isn’t like him at all to neglect his needs like this.” There is blatant accusation in her voice as she turns her glare onto Vlad, who swallows hard and sinks against the couch.

 

“I used a device,” he admits hoarsely. “To sap his power.”

 

It looks like they’re going to continue their discussion, but Jack cuts them off. “What are you talking about?” He sniffs a little, crossing his arms. “I know I haven’t been in on this as long as you two, but I still deserve to know what’s going on.”

 

Vlad averts his gaze, and Jazz’s expression goes grim. “I’m just afraid it might be… too much at once, dad.”

 

Jack shakes his head. “It is already.” He sighs, blinking to clear his damp eyes. “I need to know this. I need to be able to understand.”

 

“Okay,” Jazz concedes, albeit reluctantly. Her shoulders slump and her gaze wanders everywhere but her father as she explains, “Danny has a problem. A ghostly problem. He needs to eat… uh… ectoplasm.”

 

“Sure,” Jack says. That doesn’t sound so bad to him. “Is that why he started to actually change the ecto-filtrator?”

 

Jazz shrugs. “Anyway, it’s something specific to Danny, and it’s a big no-no, even among ghosts… for obvious reasons.”

 

Oh. Jack can feel bile burn his throat as he nods mutely, distantly disturbed by the implication. “So it’s like… cannibalism… for ghosts?”

 

Vlad nods at him. “More or less.” He rubs at his wounded shoulder, wincing.

 

“So that was-”

 

“Not really his fault,” Jazz cuts in. “Like Vlad said, he used a device to drain Danny’s power. At his usual activity level he can go a few months without eating at all.” She gestures vaguely to the kitchen. “Especially when he eats contaminated food that gets in with the experiments. It’s like the best of both worlds for him.

 

“But,” she continues, “ It’s hard to tell when he starts to starve. He gets dumber, and meaner, and that’s easy to attribute to lack of sleep.” Jazz shakes her head, almost chastising. “By the time it gets to the point where something’s really wrong he’s lost his head and is in too much pain to feed himself like a reasonable person.”

 

She sighs, rubbing at her eyes. “I wasn’t there, so I can’t know, but I imagine Danny was at the tail end of his ‘dumb-and-mean’ phase. When Vlad tried to weaken him, he inadvertently finished off his reserves. Vlad, a ghost, was the nearest source of ectoplasm, Danny flipped out, and here we are.”

 

Jack nods, covering his mouth with his hands. He sighs into his latticed fingers, rolling his shoulders and letting them slump pitifully. “What will he do now? He’s pretty much on the run: I doubt he’ll be coming back here to swipe the ecto-filtrator any time soon.”

 

Jazz shakes her head, humming weary agreement. “You’re right, but I wouldn’t worry about keeping him fed, if that’s what you’re talking about. He has reserve at Tucker’s, and maybe Sam’s, I think.”

 

“What will _we_ do now?” He asks.

 

This time, Vlad speaks, pressing his thin fingers over his wrapped wounds. “After this nightmare I suppose he’ll avoid us as much as possible. He may very well have fled to the Ghost Zone.”

 

Jack arches a brow. “The Ghost Zone?” He echoes. “But Danny fights with all the ghosts.” He swallows a chilling rush of fear at the thought. “Wouldn’t they tear him to pieces if he’s so upset- or he’ll tear _them_ to pieces… I’m not sure which is worse.”

 

Jazz shrugs helplessly, but Vlad seems to consider the question at greater length. “No,” he finally says. “I think not. Daniel is close with a tribe of cryptid-based manifestations, a tribe of no than thirty entities ranging from level five to seven on the GIW-sanctioned scale of ghostly power.”

 

Both Fentons stare, and Vlad clears his throat sheepishly. “Or so the grapevine says,” he adds awkwardly, and Jazz rolls her eyes.

 

“Yeah, sure. I’ve seen Pandora, and he’s mentioned some others in passing. I doubt he has a shortage of places to go. Even some of the ones he fights with on and off might shelter him if they see how bad things are.”

 

Vlad sighs. “Which means we have no shortage of places to look.” He turns to Jack, gaze calculating. “However I’m not sure if going out and tracking him down is the best idea given the current circumstances.”

 

“You’re right there,” Jack concedes. “So what _do_ we do?”

 

“I think the best course of action would be to keep in touch with Sam and Tucker,” Jazz declares. “He’s trusted them with his secret from the very beginning, and he was- uh, he was with Tuck last- last night.” Her voice shakes at the mention of the night, and Jack feels his chest tighten at his daughter’s distress.

 

“And,” he  says, remembering the greatest complication at hand, “we need to keep Maddie from getting her hands on him. She’s too upset to think clearly, and I know for a fact she won’t listen if she finds Danny. We need to distract her as much as possible while he recovers with his friends.”

 

Vlad nods, cracking a flimsy grin. “I’ve got just the thing,” he says devilishly, eyes flashing with the glow of carmine ectoplasm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge shout out to my dude @Patchykins for helping me write this chapter! This little series wouldn't be possible without 'em! <3


	24. A Turn for the Worse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How dare she?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> something short to express my displeasure with sam  
> i know its rushed and i might go back to finish but right now im too tired haaha

“I just finished stitching Danny back together, by the way.”

Sam arches one perfectly penciled brow, hardly looking up from her phone. “And I appreciate that. You know how I get about the all the… fluids- I can’t stand to see him that way.”

It’s been building for a while now, and something about that stupid little comment makes rage explode in his gut. It’s fire in his veins, a burning in his throat that makes him want to be sick. He was helping his best friend to corral the writhing green snakes of his entrails back into his gaping abdominal cavity only half an hour ago, but this bitter nonchalance is far more disgusting in his mind- how dare she? How dare she?

“You’re the worst kind of hypocrite,” Tucker growls, voice trembling with rage. “You’re an awful person and you know it.” There is green-black blood crusted on the thighs of his jeans, drying like dark polish under his nails: it stopped being red sometime last year. 

He is standing in the lavish living room of Sam Manson’s house. She is there, of course, looking at once affronted and aloof with her slim white arms crossed over her chest. She shifts in place from foot to foot, scuffing her hundred-dollar boots on the carpet. She does not speak, pale eyes glaring cold and hard at tucker through the curtain of her glossy black bangs.

“Yeah. Thought so.” He wrings his hands at his sides, feeling his nails cut into his own palms as he resists the urge to reach under his shirt and pluck agitatedly at the seams of his binder. Instead Tucker settles for clenching and unclenching his fists, gritting his teeth so hard he can almost feel enamel sanding off like ash in his mouth.

“‘Cause you need to be special, Sam. That’s it, isn’t it?” He curls his lip, unable to keep himself from spitting. “You don’t love him.”

“You!” Sam snaps, face twisted into a perfect mask of horror, “You’re wrong-”

Tucker almost laughs: it comes out as a scoffing kind of snort. “Yeah, sure. You love the idea of Danny.” He wets his dry lips, still shaking. “‘Cause he’s perfect in theory: sweet, sensitive arm-candy by day, confident, strong protector by night-” The words taste bitter on his tongue, sour and cold. “What’s not to love, y’know?” He barks out a short, humorless laugh, spreading his bloodied palms in front of him.

“But look at you- as soon as things aren’t perfect, you fuckin’ bail, Sam.” Her expression is unreadable, and she stays silent. “Danny needed you tonight- he needed you, and you jilted him.”

Sam actually looks contrite. “He- you both know I can’t handle the-”

“There!” Tucker roars. “You can’t handle the gore! You’re grounded, stuck, busy! I make the time!” He throws one hand out in a frustrated gesture and doesn’t care as black flecks of blood land on Sam’s stupid slim white arms. She curls in on herself a little, flinching from the volume, but does not budge from her cross-armed stoicism. The tirade isn’t over: “Well maybe it’s not about you or me, Sam! It’s about Danny!” He stomps in a vain attempt to expend some of the vehement energy spiralling in his gut. “Danny doesn’t have a choice.”

“I’m sorry,” Sam all but whispers, not making eye contact. She curls her fingers tight against her elbows, lowering her head, biting her purple-painted lip. “I’m sorry, Tuck.”

Tucker curls his lip, wiping angry tears onto his sweater sleeve. “Don’t apologize to me,” he chokes, “don’t even try.”

She just sits there and stares, head low against her own chest. She closes her eyes, imagining flecks of senseless color against her eyelids, focusing on the steady beat of her pulse in the nebulous dark.

She can hear Tuck’s boots shuffle over the carpet, the rattle of the doorknob, the heated slamming of the door. 

Sam is left in silence.


	25. Bad Bad Thoughts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s afraid of the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A vent.

Inadequacy feels like a disease that chews at Danny’s throat. The feeling tightens around his neck like a noose as he sits and he stares blankly at his phone display. He has been dazing at the same NASA blog post for something like twenty minutes because he can’t get the niggling little thought out of his head—the thought that he is  _ wrong _ .

 

School? All wrong, never right. He draws his lips back into a stiff smile at his teachers and at his friends and he struggles through his classes. Sure, he scrapes by, but that’s it. He’s not special. Everyone has a struggle and a life beyond school and they all do just fine. Danny? He’s an idiot slacker. He can’t manage to keep his shit together for longer than what, half a week? Pathetic piece of shit.

 

Home? All wrong, never right. He sits at the dinner table as his father nods and his mother goes on about all her bullshit “research.” Her? Always right. Him? Too young to understand. Naive. Ignorant. He sits there and wants to scream because it’s all so obvious, all so clear if they would just fucking listen, look,  _ learn _ . If they would just  _ see _ him and hear his words—not just the sounds but the meaning behind them. If they would listen and think Danny knows they could grow. But they don’t want to do that. And that makes him the villain.

 

He sits there and he feels like an alien in his own house, because as far as that damn house is concerned, everything he knows is  _ wrong _ . Everything he  _ is _ is wrong. 

 

Even Jazz is inconsistent. Danny wants to think she’s trying, but a venomous little piece of him says that she isn’t. He knows that she’s busy with her own problems and her own school and her own friends, but his lizard brain hates her for it. She calls him out on things he knows are bullshit but it still stings him deep in his chest and makes his eyes hurt like crying.

 

Friends? Tuck is sweet, but oblivious. Danny couldn’t ask for much more from him—they’ve been best friends since diapers, probably. Tucker didn’t ask for this, but he sticks by Danny anyway for reasons he doesn’t think he’ll ever understand.

 

Sam is difficult. Conversations with her are arduous and draining, and she never wants to end them. For all her activism, Sam is absolutely unforgiving. Danny doesn’t always fit the mold she’s built for him, so they fight. 

 

Tucker tries to mediate: operative word  _ tries _ .

 

Some angry little monster inside Danny likes how it feels to scream at her, the way it fuels the flames in his belly when she yells back, even if she drives him to tears. 

 

Maybe he deserves it. Danny thinks he thinks so, but he’s not quite sure of anything he feels anymore—so he bites himself until his hands are covered in crescent-shaped bruises because that’s better than thinking too hard. 

 

She always meets him the next day and punches him lightly in the shoulder like nothing happened, laughing even while his hands and his heart are still sore.

 

The ghost fights don’t matter to him. He does what he needs to do, so…

 

Fights? Make him feel like some paradoxical king of shit. He hates it but he wants to fight. He’s so angry and sad all the time and he doesn’t know what to do with it, so he screams and kicks and punches until his emotions are spent, then runs another round the next day. Fights are especially vocal and gratifying after shouting matches with Sam, but they make him feel empty when the rush is over.

 

He doesn’t feel loved. Tucker loves him and Jazz loves him and so do his parents, and probably even Sam, but Danny feels hated. 

 

He hates himself because nothing is enough. Too slow, too dumb, too mean, too cold. He’s surrounded by people who love him but he doesn’t think he’s ever felt so lonely. Distractions work for a time to keep him from brooding. Danny thinks he’s sometimes even happy in those little moments, but they’re finite. 

 

What happens when they run out?

 

He’s afraid of the future. 

 

He doesn’t know if he wants one.

 


End file.
